Justin Sun, the founder of TRON reportedly has plans to take control of the thirteen-year-old Silicon Valley startup.

BitTorrent is one of the pioneers of the decentralizing system on the internet with more than 100 million users. Founded in 2001 by Bram Cohen, the company is best known for its torrent client uTorrent and was responsible for around 25% of all internet traffic in 2004. However, BitTorrent failed to capitalize on their massive user base over the years as some early investors had hoped.

BitTorrent had an initial agreement drafted with a “no shop” clause and when BitTorrent entertained other offers, Sun filed suit. Sun’s lawsuit against BitTorrent, notes that after the letter of intent was signed, the company broke the contract. According to TorrentFreak, Sun registered a holding company called “Rainberry Acquisition” at the same time the exclusivity period of the letter of intent ended at the end of February. A few weeks ago, the company renamed itself Rainberry, although the company insists this was purely a corporate move.

What does TRON have to gain from the deal?

Justin Sun may be planning to monetize downloads on BitTorrent, however, it may be more useful as a means to expand the TRON ecosystem. The risk is obviously the problem of piracy prevalent in torrents, which is magnified by TRON’s size and visibility.

Just the acquisition of a brand that has specialized in decentralized communication since 2004 would likely be seen as a bright spot in TRON’s portfolio.

Many prominent personalities in the crypto ecosystem are excited about the deal, including Brian Hoffman of OpenBazaar:

Please tell me it’s true that TRON founder is buying Bram Cohens BitTorrent Inc 😂 — brian hoffman (@brianchoffman) May 25, 2018

Conclusion

BitTorrent has confirmed that the acquisition has not been finalized and that the company is in talks with other potential buyers as well. If nothing else, coming days ahead of the MainNet launch, the news is a great PR campaign. With a multi-billion dollar market cap, TRON aims to decentralize the web, which may soon be partly powered by BitTorrent.