ICOs are back in the game? BitTorrent Token (BTT) Sale by Tron Was Sold Out In Minutes, $7.12 millions raised. Binance CEO says Demand was Astronomical

BitTorrent has recently decided to make its TRC-10 token sale using the Binance Launchpad platform. The company had a very successful token offering, even when you compare it to the highest standards of the crypto industry.

At the sale, the company accepted both Tron (TRX) and Binance (BNB) tokens. According to Changpeng Zhao, the founder and public face of Binance, the whole thing was over in about 18 minutes and that was because of “system issues” because the tokens would be sold out in less than a minute without them. There was simply a crazy demand for the tokens.

The sale got around $4.1 million from TRX tokens and $2.7 million USD from Binance tokens, making a total of almost $7 million USD from selling 159 million TRX and 433 thousand BNB tokens. Before that, the company was able to raise over $20 million USD during a private sale.

About 10% of the total hard cap of 89 billion BTT tokens were sold by the value of almost $27 million USD. At the moment, the whole project is valued to be worth $300 million USD.

The demand for the tokens was so high that many countries got out of the sale because they had to pass anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures before investing, so they were not able to still get tokens during the sale.

Some of the most important countries that were basically unable to participate in the sale were China, Thailand, the United States, Venezuela and several countries from Africa. Only Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Singapore and some countries in Asia and Latin America were able to participate.

Most of the countries that were excluded from the sale had to be out because their legislation required AML and KYC procedures for token offerings above a certain threshold. For the United States, for instance, the ICO has to sell less than $1 million USD in tokens.

Token

According to the BTT whitepaper, BTT will incentivize users to offer infrastructure services, such as seeding or hosting files, in return for BTT.

To validate this concept, BitTorrent is launching something called BitTorrent Speed (release date set for Q2 2019), which will enable faster downloads for users who choose to pay file seeders in BTT.

Thus, downloaders (“leechers”) will benefit from faster downloads via prioritized resource allocation, while seeders or hosters will benefit from payment in exchange for providing bandwidth services to the network.

It’s hoped that this will incentivize downloaders (who become seeders when they start to download a file) to keep seeding, even after their download is finished, a problem that has been present since the inception of the BitTorrent protocol.

While BitTorrent Speed is the first initial experiment when it comes to tokenizing the BitTorrent protocol, the team behind BTT envisions more generalized applications of this tokenization model (with potentially more to come):

1. General decentralized mass distribution of content that might be subject to attack like censorships. With the decentralized and large network effects of the BitTorrent Protocol, not only do content creators not have to worry about hosting their content on one provider, but performance issues will also be of less worry, as the BitTorrent protocol has been proven to be able to handle large amounts of download requests, with organizations like Facebook and Twittereven using the technology to distribute updates to their servers.
2. Decentralized storage services, where users pay for storage over time
3. Decentralized proxying services, where users pay to retrieve content by URL (use cases may include content that might be subject to IP-based controls, highly mobile applications, and users with intermittent Internet connectivity, such as mobile users on WiFi, requesting content in chunks vs. in a complete form)

BTT-based transactions will be confirmed via blockchain technology to prevent fraud.

The total supply of BTT will be 990,000,000,000 (990 billion) BTT.

The tokens will be allocated as follows.

• TRON Foundation (20%)
• BitTorrent Ecosystem (19.9%)
• Team (19%)
• TRON Airdrop, or allocation for holders of Tron’s cryptocurrency (TRX) (10.1%)
• BitTorrent Airdrop, or allocation for BitTorrent client users for client install and onboarding (10%)
• Seed investors (9%)
• Public sale (6%)
• Partnerships (4%)
• Private sale (2%)

The public token sale, which starts at 15:00 UTC, January 28th, 2019 is structured as follows.

• $7.2m USD hard cap (sale finishes when hard cap is reached or at 15:00 UTC, February 3rd, 2019)
• Individual cap of $20k USD
• 59.4 billion BTT for sale (6% of total token supply)
• No vesting or lockup
• 40% of tokens for sale in BNB, 60% for sale in TRX
• Tokens distributed within 15 days of token sale conclusion

Team

The team behind BTT is the team behind BitTorrent, which as explained, is a massively popular decentralized file sharing protocol, and the team behind Tron, a highly popular blockchain-based project, whose cryptocurrency TRX, is ranked #9 by market capitalization as of writing (Coinmarketcap).

Verdict

Below is a breakdown of the risks and growth potential of BitTorrent Token (BTT).

Risks

• Would people actually pay for faster torrent downloads (initial use case for BTT, which will serve as a way to validate or invalidate the notion of tokenizing the BitTorrent protocol)? Torrents are known for enabling free downloading of content like movies and music. If users really wanted to pay for torrents, it’s possible that they would have already migrated to services like streaming via Netflix and Spotify. Moreover, BitTorrent users are not mandated to participate in BitTorrent Speed. (-0.5)
• There is a lot of legal controversy surrounding the use of BitTorrent – the protocol itself is legal; however, as mentioned, there are many illicit uses of it, such as the sharing of copyrighted content. While it’s unlikely that the team behind BTT would get into any sort of trouble, it’s possible that users might be turned off by negative press or attention about illicit use and resulting legal disputes. (-0.5)
• The team is highly experienced at building and maintaining decentralized network infrastructure (BitTorrent) and building popular blockchain-based solutions (TRON). However, competitors like Upfiring have already launched beta products, with decent feedback on places like Reddit. (-0.5)
• Although the BitTorrent and TRON teams have built large-scale decentralized network infrastructure, it will be difficult to build a blockchain that can handle the massive throughput of the BitTorrent network. (-0.5)
• Initial circulating supply is only 9% but will near 80% within 3.5 years, which means that the BTT token will face incredible inflationary pressure (-2)
• Seed and private investors got BTT at a ~68% bonus (relative to public sale price) and don’t have a lockup (though tokens are vested over a year). (-0.5)
• No details on lockups and/or vesting for team tokens. (-0.5)

Growth Potential

• BitTorrent is about as legitimate as they come for proven examples of successful decentralized networks. (+2)
• The tokenization of BitTorrent’s protocol could prove to be very interesting, and it’s possible that content creators and other individuals and groups that wish to distribute files could migrate to the protocol in order to circumvent the various problems associated with going through more centralized alternatives, such as app stores, music distribution platforms, and more. (+2)
• If tokenization via BTT takes off due to the combination of the already large network effects of BitTorrent and the validation of the BTT tokenization model, it’s very possible that BTT might be covered in mainstream media outlets, as an example of a cryptocurrency project that has “mainstream adoption”. (+1)
• The sale will be taking place on Binance’s Launchpad platform for ICOs, which provides BTT with a ready base of potential investors who can invest easily from Binance’s platform. (+1)
• Although competitors like Upfiring are up and running, the team, as mentioned, has a great track record in building decentralized networks (BitTorrent and TRON). (+2)
• Say what you want about Justin Sun and TRON, but no one can deny that Justin Sun and TRON are marketing wizards, who are highly capable of building investor interest in blockchain projects. During the bull run of late 2017~early 2018, TRX multiplied in price by over 100 times (as measured in USD), and the TRON community continues to be vibrant. (+2)

Disposition

BitTorrent Token will prove to be an interesting experiment for the future of decentralized technology. The team is combining an already large decentralized network (the BitTorrent protocol) with the idea of tokenization and crypto-economics. However, in terms of investing in the token sale, competitors, current blockchain technology limitations, inflationary pressure, more favorable terms for early investors, opacity regarding team tokens, and general lack of interest in ICOs amidst a bear market make BTT ICO participation a questionable proposition. Nevertheless, the sheer potential of leveraging BitTorrent’s network in a cryptocurrency project as well as the team’s experience in building decentralized networks and marketing make BTT a token to keep an eye on. BitTorrent Token receives a 5/10.

Investment Details

• Type: TRC10 – Utility
• Symbol: BTT
• Platform: TRON
• Crowdsale: January 28th, 2019 at 15:00 UTC
• Minimum Investment: Unspecified
• Price: 1 BTT = .00012 USD (prices in BNB and TRX set on day of token sale)
• Hard Cap: $7.2m
• Payments Accepted: TRX, BNB
• Restricted from Participating: China, USA, Afghanistan, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Burundi, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe

Source1: https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/bittorrent-token-btt-sale-by-tron-was-sold-out-in-minutes-binance-ceo-says-demand-was-astronomical/

Source2: https://hacked.com/ico-analysis-bittorrent-token/