BitTorrent, the prevalent P2P file-sharing platform, which is also the world’s largest decentralized network, is about to create a new cryptocurrency of its own using Tron’s network. The new token will get used by the users to pay for higher download speeds using the company’s uTorrent client, which runs on the Windows operating system.

Rogelio Choy, who used to be BitTorrent’s CEO, decided to leave the company behind. This happens about half a year after Tron’s CEO and founder, Justin Sun, bought the firm. That move started rumors around the technology world that Mr. Choy was not very happy about BitTorrent’s new priority to become a blockchain network.

Justin Sun about to bring blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies into the P2P file sharing world

Justin Sun, who is a consummate master when it comes to using Tweeter effectively, had this to say about the new token in uTorrent in an official Medium blog.

“BitTorrent token is the first in a series of steps to support a decentralized internet… In one giant leap, the BitTorrent client can introduce blockchain to hundreds of millions of users around the world and empower a new generation of content creators with the tools to distribute their content directly to others on the web.”

The blog post offers further detail by explaining that non-US investors will be the first to get some of the new tokens by using Binance Launchpad, which is Binance’s delegated token sale platform. Binance is a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange which has partnered up with Tron in this and several other ventures. The token will be called BitTorrent Token (BTT).

There is an official whitepaper for BTT. The total number will be of 990 billion, and it will be based on TRC-10, which is the simplest Tron technology for issuing digital assets based on TRX.

The moment in which Mr. Choy has chosen to make and publish his decision to walk away from BitTorrent kind of shows that he wasn’t too happy about the company’s new way of doing things, based on blockchain technology. Variety, which is not precisely specialized in technology news, maintained that it spoke to a company insider who told it that there was friction about BitTorrent’s new orientation. But Mr. Choy has not spoken explicitly about this subject at all.

Mr. Choy’s departure was confirmed by BitTorrent’s spokesperson a couple of days ago, a little after the news broke. The company gave no details or explanations and just limited itself to say that he “decided to pursue other opportunities.”

Mr. Choy was BitTorrent’s COO from 2012 to 2015. He then left and rejoined in 2017 as CEO. That was his position when Mr. Sun bought the company over last summer. After that operation, the former CEO served as Tron’s platform’s storage business general manager.

The announcement to create the BTT token comes about a few months after BitTorrent and Tron announced Project Atlas, which is the technology that will merge BitTorrent into the Tron network. The main idea in Project Atlas is to provide incentives for users to keep seeding their files for longer periods of time. Seeding will be rewarded with the newly minted BTT coins.

The news about the new BTT token in BitTorrent made the price of TRX go up by a little more than 2.3% in a day in which most other digital had been trading in similar numbers, but red, not green. Even today, while all other cryptocurrencies are in red, Tron (TRX) stands in green by more than 11% at the press time.

Image courtesy of PixaBay.