BitTorrent(BTTOLD)

BitTorrent was created in 2001 with the combined efforts of developers Brad Cohen and David Harrison. The peer-to-peer network was a big success allowing users to distribute electronic files and data related to gaming, movies, and music over the internet in a decentralized manner.

Faced with piracy concerns as well as regulatory actions, BitTorrent failed to capitalize on its initial success. However, in 2019, BitTorrent was acquired by Justin Sun, the founder of TRON Foundation, the creators of the TRON blockchain. The company introduced the BTT token the same year to advance and expand the network’s protocols and incentivize participants. 

With the launch of BTT token, the new owners of BitTorrent hope to solve problems such as slow downloading speeds and the dilemma of users abandoning swarms without uploading the material they have downloaded, causing files to be lost over time.  

BTT price

BTT/USD price started 2020 at $0.0003 before going up to $0.0006 by mid-Feb of the same year — a 119% increase and an all-time high. However, as the crypto market crashed in March, so did the price of BTT.

BitTorrent token's price saw another rally between May. 20 to Aug.17, 2020, going from around $0.0002 to $0.0005 — a 107% increase, however, BTT price failed to retest its previous all-time high and continued to show volatility for the rest of the year.

Despite showing a weak run during Q4 of 2020, BTT registered some noteworthy rallies in 2021. According to our BTT live price chart, the token saw a significant pump at the beginning of the year, going from $0.0002 in January to $0.001 by Feb. 9, 2021 — a 610% price surge.

With this massive increase in the price of BTT, the BitTorrent token continued its rally in 2021 and went on to set a new all-time high in April, at over $0.0135 — a nearly 1,300% increase from February's lows.

At its peak in 2021, the BTT token reached a fully diluted valuation of $12.8 billion. That sudden growth in the price of BTT can be attributed to a number of updates and general market bullishness toward coins trading below $0.01.

How BTT works

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file-sharing platform, that connects parties who want to share files through its network. A transaction begins when a "leecher" (user seeking a file) puts in a request for data from the "seeders" or file providers who have the required data on their computers.

Seeders or providers can have either complete files or fragments of them, and distribute them among leechers, who then, in turn, become providers themselves. This entire cycle makes it possible for data to be distributed efficiently without compromising the network's speed and efficiency. 

However, the expansion of BitTorrent with BTT token is aimed at further improving the current model, where leechers often leave after they have the file data they require. In the typical model, once leechers have the files they want, they no longer have any incentive to keep seeding the files for others. BTT solves that by providing an incentive layer, among other benefits.

While the BitTorrent network uses its own software, BTT is a TRC-10 token running on the TRON blockchain.

This merger between BitTorrent and TRON allows for the development of decentralized applications (DApps), to further amplify its services. One of the prime examples of such DApps is BitTorrent Speed where a requester can request a provider for more bandwidth using BTT tokens. 

Similarly, another popular DApp is the BitTorrent file system (BTFS), a file storage protocol that promises to tackle issues of centralized storage, cost, trust, and fault tolerance.

BTT news, updates, and highlights

In Jan. 2020, BitTorrent announced that they had acquired DLive, a popular blockchain-based streaming platform built on the Lino blockchain. Both teams would be working to bring blockchain-based P2P content sharing to the BitTorrent community. DLive would be using BitTorret’s BTFS services to move closer to decentralization.

In late Nov. 2020, TRON’s BitTorrent and Huawei, one of the biggest telecommunications equipment manufacturers, partnered to add BitTorrent, BitTorrent Pro, uTorrent, and uTorrent pro to the Huawei ecosystem. This would allow 3 billion Huawei users across 170 countries to access the decentralized network from their cell phones. 

In March 2022 BitTorrent revealed that they would be getting involved in the NFT market space, operating on the TRON and Ethereum blockchains. This news saw the price of BTT appreciate in the short term.

Frequently asked questions about BTT

• Can you mine or stake BTT?

No, you cannot mine BTT since it uses the delegated-proof-of-stake mechanism, however, you can stake your tokens for more bandwidth or prioritized access to specific files. 

• What are some of the best BTT wallets?

BTT can be stored on TronLink and Trust Wallet. If you are interested in hardware wallets, Ledger Nano S and Trezor One are good options.

• What can you do with BTT?

You can stake your BTT tokens or you can pay a provider for more download speed, request a file you wish to download, or tip streamers on DLive. 

• How to buy BTT?

BTT can be bought by exchanging BTC, ETH, and USDT through an exchange like HitBTC, or you can use your credit or debit card to purchase it from exchanges supporting P2P trading like Binance and OKX.