BitTorrent (BTT) Review 2020
Since launching in 2019, BTT has been able to possess the crypto market for a while, and the hype behind the project led to the entire initial coin offering (ICO) selling out within only 15 minutes and raising about $7.2 million in this process. BitTorrent token's price spiked within a short time after launching and gave BTT news heavy media attention. But what is behind that hype? And what is BitTorrent Token? In this guide, we'll unveil the BitTorrent token and provide you with a deeper look at all the BitTorrent (BTT) token details.
What is BitTorrent (BTT)?
BitTorrent, a name might seem familiar to many internet users today. It's a peer-to-peer communication protocol for file sharing with a community of over 100 million internet users. The protocol was launched by BitTorrent, Inc., an American company founded by Bram Cohen and located in San Francisco, CA. After the acquisition of the whole BitTorrent platform by the Tron Foundation, this step was followed by a recent introduction of the BitTorrent cryptocurrency that the protocol implements as a monetary incentive. So, to understand the BitTorrent Token (BTT), at first, you have to be aware of some fundamentals about the original BitTorrent network, and what is BitTorrent used for.
How Does BitTorrent Work?
BitTorrent is the largest decentralized file-sharing protocol. Similar to the Blockchain network, BitTorrent shares some characteristics such as multiple administrative organs, users' protection through randomly generated lines (which allows to hide their identity), and the decentralized sharing system with no central entity. Here’s how the BitTorrent protocol works:
- The hosted files within BitTorrent protocol, which are known as torrents, are being split into several pieces so the BitTorrent users can download them more efficiently.
- BitTorrent network implements a quick and cheap P2P file sharing between uploaders (called as seeders) and downloaders.
- When you download a particular file through BitTorrent, you actually receive separate pieces of that file from many seeds. And the whole network of seeders and downloaders for a particular file is called a swarm.
- The distributed structure of BitTorrent allows you to upload and download huge files in a cheap and efficient way with reducing internet congestion. But it should be noted that the BitTorrent network requires seeds to survive.
BitTorrent has become distinguished in the cryptocurrency industry after launching the BTT coin which is powered by the TRON platform. As the BitTorrent Token (BTT) was created to be the official coin of BitTorrent. Now, after we have gotten a solid knowledge of BitTorrent, let's head into the BitTorrent Token and what is BTT coin.
What is BTT Token?
As we already mentioned, BitTorrent needs seeds for the system to survive. But as there’s no monetary incentive to seeders in the original BitTorrent protocol, many swarms often die out after a short while. To solve this problem, BTT crypto project offers rewards for BitTorrent users to continue offering infrastructure services such as seeding and hosting files. BitTorrent Token (BTT) is a TRC-10 token as it is a part of the Tron blockchain, while most tokens are ERC20 as they are based on Ethereum blockchain. And this makes sense when considering that the BitTorrent company itself is owned by the founder of Tron, Justin Sun (as part of a $140 million acquisitions deal). Hence, the BTT altcoin is targeting those people who use file-sharing services in the network.
Adding BTT token increases the chance that the familiar protocol creates a token-based economy for bandwidth and storage resources on the current BitTorrent network, which in turn allows the network participants to capture the value of sharing bandwidth and storage. Users are aware of the challenges including slow download and over-time unavailable files. Therefore, creating incentives for them to share enables the token to provide faster download and longer useful life for the entire network. The primary use case of BitTorrent token is to continue seeding files on the BitTorrent platform. However, BTT can also be used for other purposes such as for speculation, investment, and just as a normal digital currency. To summarize, here are the main pros and cons of the BitTorrent cryptocurrency:
Pros
- The BTT coins contribute to improving the BitTorrent ecosystem.
- It targets an extremely large user base.
- Offering additional BitTorrent features to the platform’s users with providing a way to earn money through sharing distributed content and seeding.
- Enabling users to download files with higher speed by spending a small amount of BTT tokens.
Cons
- Nothing can guarantee that BTT token will speed up the BitTorrent network.
- Most of the turnout comes from crypto investors, not BitTorrent users. However, the project is under development and the BitTorrent team hopes to make a bridge connecting between the crypto industry and torrent users.
Well, all of this might be clear enough! But the question arises: how does BitTorrent manage its tokens to achieve the stated goals? Let's take a look at the following chart to understand.
How is BTT Distributed?
BitTorrent Tokens (BTT) are distributed in the following manner:
- Tron Foundation – 20%
- BitTorrent Ecosystem – 19.9%
- Team and the BitTorrent Foundation – 19%
- Tron Airdrops (the Tron BTT airdrop binance rounds plus other tron bittorrent airdrop) – 10.1%
- BitTorrent Airdrop (BTT Airdrop For BitTorrent Protocol) – 10%
- Seed Sale – 9%
- Investors – 6%
- Partnerships – 4%
- Private sale – 2%
It should be noted that BitTorrent token also powers the BitTorrent services such as BitTorrent Speed, which is a splendid example of a BTT token application.
What is BitTorrent Speed?
The TRON Foundation and BitTorrent provide the BitTorrent Speed service, which is a software that can be used to optimize the downloading of torrent files. It connects and rewards users with BitTorrent (BTT) tokens, and it can be integrated into the popular BitTorrent client. BTT token will power the BTT speed model, as the BitTorrent users can spend BTT tokens on having access to faster downloads. Or they can earn money from file distribution as seeders. With BitTorrent Speed, the BitTorrent download speeds on peer-to-peer networks can get faster and become more readily available. Download optimization using BitTorrent Speed will vary depending on the number of people using the file and the number bidding with tokens. You can be part of the BitTorrent community now. Whether you are looking for downloading files or sharing files and seeding to earn BTT tokens, here's how!
How to Start Using BitTorrent?
If you want to use BitTorrent, you have several faces of using:
- For downloading files, you can find torrent links to the content you are interested in through the very wide BitTorrent community. Download a .torrent file then drag-n-drop it into μTorrent client where you will be able to see your download progress.
- For sharing your content, you can create your own torrent link and share your connections. You can earn BTT from seeding your files on the BitTorrent platform.
Bottom Line
BitTorrent provides almost a quarter of the online content global distribution and it handles what is estimated 3.35% of all worldwide internet traffic. However, this will not be crucial to the success of the BTT token project. Users, as a consequence of the emerging of the getting files alternative way, delete the files causing the speed reduction of data transfer. But, the TRON team alongside the BitTorrent team is working in full swing in order to scale up the BTT adoption and provide services targeting those millions of users, whose number increases steadily over time.
