Peer-to-peer (p2p) torrent client BitTorrent has announced that its native token, BitTorrent Token (BTT), based on the Tron protocol, is now supported by CoinPayments’ crypto payments gateway. The news was shared with Cointelegraph in a press release Feb. 7.
As reported, BitTorrent launched its BTT token this January — its first full-fledged move to begin to tokenize its content sharing ecosystem, roughly six months after the company was acquired by decentralized internet startup Tron.
According to today’s press release, BitTorrent has already been collaborating with CoinPayments on supporting Tron (TRX), Bitcoin (BTC) and Binance Coin (BNB) payments for premium services. With the addition of BTT support, users can now reportedly use the token to pay for BitTorrent and µTorrent Pro subscriptions, which offer file conversion, HD quality streaming and malware protection.
Justin Sun, founder of Tron and CEO of BitTorrent, has clarified the roadmap for tokenization of the BitTorrent ecosystem, stating that the partnership with CoinPayments is a bid to “make BitTorrent (BTT) liquid in the online marketplace before [the token] is fully integrated into our desktop and mobile products.”
This summer, the BTT-powered blockchain application “BitTorrent Speed” will reportedly be rolled out as part of BitTorrent’s Windows-based µTorrent Classic client. According to the BitTorrent site, the application will allow users to exchange BTT for seeding and bandwidth to support faster download times.
BitTorrent — first created in 2004 — claims to have over 100 million users in its existing decentralized p2p network.
As reported, the roadmap for Tron and BitTorrent’s mutual integration has been dubbed “Project Atlas,” which aims to create a decentralized content distribution platform using cryptocurrency.
As of press time, Tron (TRX) is ranked as the 8th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and is trading at around $0.0258, up 0.25 percent on the day, according to CoinMarketCap.