BitTorrent

BitTorrent Token (BTT) is a token built on the Tron blockchain to add an economic layer to BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file transfer protocol created by Bram Cohen in 2001. BitTorrent Inc. was acquired by Tron's founder in 2018, and the token launched the following year through a Binance Launchpad sale.

The original BitTorrent protocol relies on voluntary sharing: users who download a file are expected to continue seeding it for others, but nothing enforces this and many stop as soon as their download completes. The token was introduced to address that by making bandwidth and storage tradeable.

How it is used

The main implementation is BitTorrent Speed, where users can spend BTT to bid for faster downloads and earn BTT by seeding files for others. This turns an informal social norm into a market, so peers who continue sharing are compensated rather than relying on goodwill.

The token has also been used in BitTorrent File System, a decentralized storage layer where users pay for hosting and providers earn for supplying capacity.

Supply

BTT has a maximum supply of 990,000,000,000,000 tokens, with roughly 987 trillion circulating. The very large figure results from a redenomination in 2021 that replaced the original token at a ratio of one to one thousand, so holders received a thousand new tokens for each old one. The change did not alter the value of anyone's holdings, only the unit count.

BitTorrent remains one of the most widely used protocols on the internet by traffic volume, though the connection between that usage base and demand for the token depends on how many users adopt the token-enabled clients.