The BitTorrent ICO is a 15-Minute Sellout

BitTorrent, acquired by Tron last year, completed an ICO today beginning at 3:00 PM UTC using Binance Launchpad.

Two simultaneous sales were run for Binance Coin and Tron. Neither market lasted longer than 15 minutes, according to Binance. More BTT was available for Tron than BNB.

In the BNB session, all 23.76 billion BTT were sold to token sale participants within 13 minutes and 25 seconds. Meanwhile, in the TRON session, all 35.64 billion BTT were sold within 14 minutes and 41 seconds.

BTT is a TRC-10 token that incentivizes improved file sharing on the network. The new system will enable downloaders and uploaders to utilize BTT in a variety of ways. The primary intention is to encourage seeders to seed files longer. “Seeding” is essentially hosting files.

Choking is the primary means of allocating resources within a BitTorrent swarm. It is this mechanism that we will adapt to allow for clients to offer rewards to others for continued seeding of content they want access to. Allowing clients to bid BTT for preferential treatment by the choking algorithm gives them a powerful tool to offer incentives to seeds to remain in a swarm.

Bram Cohen Not On Board

BitTorrent itself is the original torrent client, created by the BitTorrent protocol’s inventor. Bram Cohen has publicly made clear that he has no affiliation with the latest incarnation of BitTorrent. At the same time, Cohen has been working on his own cryptocurrency project called “Chia.”

According to the whitepaper, the token uses Lightning-network-like “payment channels” to create contracts between seeds, uploaders, and downloaders. One thing that is unclear is whether alternative BitTorrent clients will be able to access paid-download speeds. However, according to Binance Research:

[P]aid consumers are not the only ones who benefit; the token is an opt-in model, meaning that individuals that do not want to pay or charge for torrenting can always continue to do so. […]  With the potential to earn, the token can also disincentivize users from turning off seeding once they receive the files they want, because of the opportunity cost of forgone seeding income.

The official BitTorrent client reportedly has over 100 million users. These users will automatically be integrated into the Tron economy in upcoming updates, greatly expanding the reach of the #8 cryptocurrency. Everyone who wants to make use of their BTT will have to have at least a small amount of Tron in the same way that Ethereum token holders require Ether to make transactions.

The greatly anticipated ICO event has arguably not had the desired effect on the Tron price. At the time of writing, it had seen a nearly 8% drop over the 24-hour period, with a low of an almost 11% drop. On a per-token basis, these changes are not great. However, on a macro scale, they are notable for those with large bags.

Tron’s price isn’t jumping as some may have expected.

Click here for a real-time TRON price chart.

Price Charts from TradingView.