What is a BTT coin and how to use it?

BitTorrent is a communication protocol that revolutionized peer-to-peer file sharing. Back in 2001, when in July the first available version launched, the world had painfully limited options when it came to the safe transfer of huge files. 

While the BitTorrent itself is completely legal, the protocol gained notoriety for its abuse by pirate websites like Pirate Bay. They distributed illegally obtained content, movies, games, TV shows, and music. What many don’t realize is how deep BitTorrent adoption was by podcasters to share their content, broadcasters (CBC, Norwegian NRK), Amazon AWS (until 2021). Blizzard distributed our favorite games (Diablo III, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft), as well as Wargaming (World of Tanks), EVE Online, and others.

In partnership with Tron blockchain, BitTorrent token (BTT) was issued as both a monetization method, as well as an incentive program for torrenting, solving issues for users of the protocol. BTT is simple to use, as you will see from this complete guide.

BTT Price chart

As you can see the price of the token has seen some action before the crypto winter of 2022, with firm faith that with the needs of Web3 for a more decentralized approach to the Intenet, peer-to-peer networks will gain significance, hopefully taking the BTT coin price to the moon.

A brief history of BTT: When BitTorrent met Tron

BitTorrent protocol is managed by the BitTorrent Foundation. However, despite the huge popularity of the early 2000s, although the use of BitTorrent didn’t really diminish, still counting above 100 million users, the Foundation struggled to solve several issues. The first issue was the struggle to monetize this massively popular tool of free speech. The second was the lack of incentives for users to share their bandwidth and storage necessary for peer-to-peer exchange.

Computers distributing the content (also known as ‘seeds’) didn’t have much incentive to keep the files forever, diminishing their availability over time. 

Uploader or ‘seed’ distributes to other users in the network (also known as ‘leechers’). While BitTorrent protocol helps share the load and smarter distribution algorithm, the pillar of torrenting remained those users willing to ‘seed’ the files for others.

The Tron Foundation was started in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun. The foundation was tasked with developing the Tron network, which was established already in 2014. The launch of the MainNet in June 2018 was an important technical milestone. TRON evolved and became a reliable partner for other projects, supporting both the Pi academy network and hosting the world’s most important stablecoin – Tether (USDT). 

How the BTT was born?

BitTorrent and TRON network were a match made in heaven, as the Tron Foundation acquired BitTorrent Foundation and all its products, bringing them into the fold of TRON’s ecosystem. Soon after, the BTT token was launched via Binance’s LaunchPad, with an initial coin offering (ICO), bringing over 7 million USD in crowdfunded investments. 

BTT was to become a bridge between content creators and their audience. BitTorrent was created as a tool of free speech, and its userbase was always dedicated to freedom of information, promoting sharing, and resisting censorship. With these values being similar to crypto technologies, TRON is there to provide technology and infrastructure bringing all of BitTorrent’s users to connect at a global level. 

With cryptocoin behind the protocol, the main task of promoting collaboration was now possible, incentivizing the users to share their bandwidth and storage, to keep sharing the files. Coins can be used in exchange for faster downloads, both to ISPs and individual users, and the tokens can be exchanged for TRON (TRX).

BTT’s crypto team

The former CEO of BitTorrent, still spearheading its development is the founder of TRON, Justin Sun. He was Davos Global Youth Leader in 2014 and was ranked in Forbes China 30 under 30 from 2015 through 2017. When the decentralization of Tron was finalized with Tron DAO taking over the Foundation, Justin retired from the position of CEO to become a diplomat for Granada, serving as its permanent representative to the WTO.

Head of Product & Engineering Justin Knoll is an experienced software executive and startup advisor with 18 years of experience building and growing scalable solutions for streaming media, peer-to-peer networking. He was VP of the BitTorrent Business unit until August 2021, now Lead Managing Director of MetaMask.

The technical Head of TRON, responsible for public chain and DeFi is Marcus Zhao who joined Tron in the early days. He’s an experienced researcher and machine learning enthusiast. Marcus was Alibaba’s chief data mining expert. 

BTT’s vision

BitTorrent Foundation and TRON partnered up to introduce not only the BTT token but also the extended version of the BitTorrent protocol, creating the basis for token-based optimization of the existing protocol.

Not only is the token there to support the networking economy at a global scale, providing the community with the means to capture the value of shared bandwidth, but it’s there to support the creation of a truly decentralized web.

This is also portrayed in BTT’s tokenomics, with public sales constituting 9% of the total token supply, private sales only 2%. Seed sale tokens are making 9% of the supply, with 10% + 10% reserved for Tron and BTT airdrops. Team and the BitTorrent Foundation are granted 19%, TRON Foundation received 20%, BitTorrent Ecosystem is allocated 20%, while consultants and partners will have a total of 4% of all the tokens.

How does BTT work?

It’s time to get a bit technical and peek under the hood. Modern crypto projects gather value according to the pragmatical use of the network. The real use cases matter more, as investors are seeking tokens that will stay and reflect the success of the organization behind them.

The technology behind the BitTorrent token and its value

BitTorrent protocol is all about file sharing. Torrent sites are entry points for torrents, indexing and keeping track of the metadata. Trackers are specialized servers that assist in the communication between sharing computers (peers). Service providers can be seeds (users with fully downloaded files) or peers (users with partial copies of the distributed files) and they can accept BTT tokens.

BTT tokens are primarily designed to facilitate an ecosystem of interactions and transactions, like rewards for seeding. Transfer of tokens will be done both via private ledger as well as through TRON’s public blockchain. Tokens can be exchanged, as all main crypto exchanges are listing BTT, Binance, Bittrex, Bitfinex, KuCoin, and many more. BitTorrent’s client software, uTorrent, and its versions will have an integrated wallet. Then, when the user wants to enjoy faster speeds, the client will bid BTT coins to get better download speeds. While seeding, providing a shared file to other users, the integrated wallet will store earned BTT.

Interesting is the fact that BitTorrent’s estimation is that about a billion devices are using the protocol, hence the total circulation will be 990 billion tokens, roughly 990 BTT per device.

Staking (Mining) BTT tokens

BitTorrent is a Proof of Stake network, like many of the altcoins today are. This means that the process of creating new tokens is not as energy-intensive and time-consuming as mining Bitcoin. You can basically do it even on your phone, much like you can ‘mine’ the Cardano (ADA). 

All you need is a wallet to decide do you want to stake your BTT in a pool or do you want to ‘stake it out’ basically locking your tokens for 14 days in order to reap rewards. 

BTT wallets and how to choose them

It’s not easy to pick, as the BTT token is essentially a TRC-10 token, which means that every wallet that can hold TRON (TRX), can handle BTT as well. We’re talking about more than 60 wallets to choose from. We will cover three of them here, TronLink as representative of web wallets, TronWallet as representative of app wallet, and Ledger as representative of hardware (cold) storage.

TronLink

TronLink is developed by a small company from Sri Lanka. It’s a web wallet, installed exactly like MetaMask (extension to Chrome). Although it has some difficulties, it’s a simple solution used by more than half a million users. 

Pros: Quick to use, you stay logged in, supports all TRON tokens, integrates popular dapps, and is easy to use.

Cons: Web wallets are not the safest. While it promises a connection with Ledger’s Nano hardware wallets, it often happens that the device doesn’t recognize the wallet. Beware. 

Tron Wallet

This wallet has web, as well as apps for Android and iOS. This wallet is supported by Tron DAO, as it is dedicated for use on their network. It can be simple, but it is easy to use.

Pros: Good security features, simple to use, better than web wallets

Cons: There are wallets better for newbies, can’t store any other token but those on TRON’s networks. 

Ledger

Hardware solutions are the safest, while not among the most convenient. Ledger’s Nano products are capable of storing TRC-10 tokens, including BTT tokens.

Pros: The best security, robust solution for keeping your tokens safe

Cons: Slow, not always convenient, you need another wallet which is either an app or web version.

BTT and crypto community – Legal and security issues

BitTorrent brought with it file sharing with total anonymity. Anonymity, in turn, brought the culture of unrestricted sharing with disregard for intellectual property rights. Tokenization of protocol could lead to the identification of users, alienating the community. 

A potential issue is the legality of content shared and the inability to be tracked and controlled by the appropriate authority. Considering that majority of the protocol users are used to ‘free’ content, many question the shift towards monetization through tokens.

The future of BTT

The plans for the future of BTT are connected to the visions of both Tron and BitTorrent’s protocol. An immediate idea would be to connect Tron and BTT networks, unleashing the real concept of the decentralized web. 

The goal of BTT is to become the main system for the mass distribution of content on the planet. Other than just sharing, BTT wants to branch into the decentralized storage system. 

TradeCrypto: The verdict

Currently, BTT is not particularly interesting to crypto traders. Originally low prices fell further at the onset of the crypto winter. The problem it solves is not very urgent and use case limited. However, the need for content streaming in Web3 space offers vast untapped potential if BTT could bridge to other networks.

Right now it’s a ‘penny stock’ kind of token. It doesn’t offer much hope for growth in value, as short term investment. However, those who believe that BitTorrent technology and the ecosystem of content creators will matter in the future would have nothing to lose HODLing BTT.

BitTorrent Token FAQ