In the early hours (UTC time) of Sunday (January 27th), TRON (TRX) surged over 14% in price to become the seventh most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap, and as TRON Foundation CEO pointed out, this means that TRON is ahead of both Litecoin (LTC) and Stellar (XLM) in the market cap table. In this article, we look at some factors that could be responsible for TRON’s impressive recent price action.

At press time (around 09:00 UTC), according to data from CryptoCompare, TRX was trading at $0.03118, up 14.3% in the past 24-hour period. Here is the one-day chart:

And TRX’s performance in the past 30 days is even more impressive: during this period, the TRX price has gone from $0.01922 on December 28th (at 09:00 UTC) to $0.03118 on January 27th (09:00 UTC), i.e. gone up in value by over 62%:

TRON Founder and CEO, Justin Sun, who is a master of promoting TRON on Twitter, was quick to point out TRON’s new position in the market cap tables:

So, what’s behind TRON’s strong recent price action? The main cause for the excitement surrounding TRON at the moment is its integration with the BitTorrent ecosystem, which we examined in an article on January 18th. As Justin Sun indicates in the tweet below, the BitTorrent Token (BTT) goes on sale on January 28th on Binance Launchpad:

One week ago, the BitTorrent Foundation revealed in a Medium blog post details regarding the BTT airdrop for TRX holders.

“On February 11th, 2019, BitTorrent Foundation will initiate its first airdrop of BitTorrent (BTT) to TRON (TRX) holders. The snapshot will be taken when TRON’s block height reaches 6.6 million*. Based on this snapshot, BitTorrent Foundation will initiate its first airdrop of 10,890,000,000 BitTorrent (BTT), corresponding to 1.1% of total circulating supply. Over the next 12 months following this initial airdrop, 11,880,000,000 BTT will be offered to TRX holders, corresponding to 1.2% of total supply. In 2020, the BitTorrent Foundation will airdrop 12,870,000,000 BTT, corresponding to 1.3% of the total circulating supply, and over the next six years, the percentage airdropped will increase by 0.1% per year, reaching 1.7% in 2025.”

Anyone holding TRX is eligible for BTT airdrops, and all “official wallets relaying on TRON’s network and carrying TRX will be eligible for BTT airdrops corresponding to the amount they are holding.”

Many exchanges and wallets have already announced their support for these airdrops; this list includes Binance, OKEx, Huobi, Bithumb, DragonEx, Upbit, Gate.io, CoinEx, Trust Wallet, and (most recently) Atomic Wallet. Here is an example of one of these announcements:

🥳🎉💰We'd like to confirm that we will support the upcoming BTT airdrop for TRX holders on @BitrueOfficial ! Please also expect more announcement to be made for $TRX holders in the following days!😇💰💰❤❤❤@Tronfoundation @BitTorrent @justinsuntron @Curis_Wang pic.twitter.com/GFQeADTlWI — Bitrue (@BitrueOfficial) January 24, 2019

And the good news on the Dapp front can only be adding to the excitement surrounding TRON at the moment:

#TRON has over 150 #Dapps and more than 300 smart contracts. According to tron.dapp, there are 7 decentralized exchanges(DEX), 6 collection games and 30 tool Dapps. The Dapp ecosystem is relatively well-rounded, forming an organic growth trend. #TRX $TRX https://t.co/whPKtjUMsF — Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) January 25, 2019

Featured Image Courtesy of TRON Foundation