The pioneering peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing company BitTorrent has announced the creation of its own cryptocurrency with network speed and user incentives in mind, with technical details in a white paper.
Crypto for torrents
According to a blog post on the official website, the BitTorrent Token (BTT) will be exchangeable between users who wish to pay for more bandwidth on a torrent download. In turn, the prospect of payment gives users a reason to keep their file on the network post-download.
The move comes after cryptocurrency firm Tron acquired BitTorrent in June 2017. According to Justin Sun, founder of Tron and CEO of BitTorrent, this move is “the first in a series of steps” towards supporting decentralized internet services.
Speaking on the potential of the project, he also said: “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.”
Initially, the token is to be launched through the µTorrent Classic client which is Windows-based and has the largest user-base. In addition, BTT will be fully supported on other clients that use the BitTorrent protocol, which also makes it backward compatible so that users who do not wish to engage with BTT do not have to.
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