BitTorrent tokens sell out in 15 minutes

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The BitTorrent Foundation recently announced plans that it would introduce its own cryptocurrency, the BitTorrent Token (BTT), a utility token built on the Tron blockchain. The tokens were offered for purchase yesterday and, despite several technical glitches, $7.2 million – the entire supply offered – were sold on Binance’s Launchpad in under 15 minutes.

The sale began at 3:00 UTC on Launchpad through two different sales channels. One allowed for investors to purchase the token using Tron’s own TRX token and the other through Binance’s BNB token. According to information on the Binance website, each BTT was valued at $0.00012 during the launch. Per sales specifications, the minimum purchase was 100,000 BTT.

The sales were expected to be complete once BTT’s hard cap was reached or at 10:00 UTC. Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun tweeted shortly after the sale began that the 23.76-billion token cap for the BNB sales channel was achieved in 13 minutes, 25 seconds. The 35.64-billion cap for the TRX channel was reached in 14 minutes, 41 seconds.

It apparently wasn’t as smooth an operation as anticipated. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao stated on Twitter that the sale could have lasted only seconds if it weren’t for a few technical issues. He stated, “Both sessions concluded. Took about 18 minutes, due to a system issue, would have taken 18 seconds otherwise. Demand was astronomical.”

Zhao then added in a separate Twitter post, “Full transparency. The issue experienced today was caused by the ‘user agreement confirmation’ button caching/locking. Most of the stress tests focused on the buy process, this part was not covered thoroughly enough. The order of requests received was preserved.”

BitTorrent has been around for about 17 years. It is one of the earliest decentralized file-sharing platforms to be introduced and was purchased by Tron last year. The launch of BTT incorporates blockchain-based rewards that give greater access to files and offer the ability to receive faster download speeds through the BitTorrent Speed platform.

Next month, the BitTorrent Foundation will introduce its first of several BTT airdrops for TRX holders on February 11. 10.89 billion BTT – about 1.1% of the total circulating supply – will be released at the time, and an additional 11.88 billion will be released over the following 12 months. There will be additional airdrops scheduled periodically through 2025.