BitTorrent, the company most well-known for spearheading peer-to-peer online file-sharing, is now launching its own cryptocurrency. This news comes in a fresh press release shared on January 3rd.



TRON acquired BitTorrent in July



First of all, this story should be prefaced with a brief background of the torrent client’s previous cryptocurrency affiliations. BitTorrent was acquired by TRON this past July. TRON has since been working hard on integrating BitTorrent into its overarching plans.



This new version of the P2P software is reportedly dubbed Project Atlas, and intends to introduce ”backward-compatible protocol extensions.” More specifically, TRON’s CEO Justin Sun has previously shared that this will eventually result in ”faster downloads, more seeds, too mining, and backward compatibility.”



It is, therefore, not all too surprising that BitTorrent is now launching a native token that is built off the TRON protocol. The token is reportedly just called the BitTorrent Token (BTT).



This can be viewed as TRON’s first serious attempt to tokenize its BitTorrent content-sharing platform. Moreover, this would not be any small feat, as the service reportedly touts over 100 million users.



The BitTorrent token comes as a part of BitTorrent and TRON’s integration



Furthermore, the company has shared that the BitTorrent tokens will be issued by the BitTorrent Foundation. In addition to this, the BTTs will also feature native, built-in TRC-10 compatibility. Put simply, this means that the tokens will follow the TRON blockchain’s technical standard.



According to a fresh press release, the BitTorrent tokens will also only be available to non-US users on Binance. Moreover, they will reportedly be issued through ”selective” airdrops which are to take place later this month.



It will be interesting to see how this continues to develop. The news that BitTorrent is now gearing up to release its own native token with TRON-functionality means that Project Atlas seems to be one step closer to fruition.



Furthermore, Project Atlas and BTT are both parts of TRON’s comprehensive strategy to create a decentralized content distribution platform. This comes as BitTorrent is already claiming that its BitTorrent protocol is the ”largest decentralized P2P network in the world.”



It is, therefore, entirely possible that TRON will be able to leverage BitTorrent, and now BTT, to realize such an aforementioned content distribution platform. As always, it remains to be seen how this plays out – but the move is certainly intriguing.

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