Justin Sun, the founder of “decentralized web” altcoin Tron, has reportedly taken over Bittorrent Inc, the San Francisco-headquartered company founded in 2004 to manage the ongoing development of the Bittorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol.
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TRX Founder Buys Bittorrent
Justin Sun, a former Chief Representative of the Greater China Region for Ripple, closed an acquisition deal for Bittorrent last week and employees have been notified but asked not to talk about it with the media, Variety has now reported, ending weeks of speculation. The financial details of the deal weren’t made publicly available as the two sides haven’t officially announced the acquisition yet. Additionally, just a number of Bittorent’s shareholders have already been contacted by the transfer agent responsible for the transaction according to the report.
Comparing the two ventures Sun is involved with now can tell us a lot about the current state of the cryptocurrency scene, as well as the possible impact of the ease of crowd-funding on crypto projects’ relationship with the established technology industry.
Sign of Things to Come?
While the Bittorrent protocol is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and constitutes a significant share of all internet traffic, the company behind it has found few ways to monetize, like running ads on the µtorrent client. But in total revenue, Bittorrent has raised only $35.8 million in three rounds over the fourteen years of its existence.
In contrast to Bittorrent Inc, Tron is barely out of the gate and already has a market capitalization of about $3 billion right now (down from as high as over $6 billion) thanks to the price of its TRX token. In fact, Tron only had its official launch for the mainnet a few days ago (on May 31) and its planned “Independence Day” is still twelve days away, meaning when TRX will no longer be just another ERC20 token.
Those who believe that Tron will fulfil its dream of building a decentralized web may see this as an indication that crypto companies are taking over the old guard. Cynics, on the other hand, might say that we’ve finally found a good business model for ICOs: raise ungodly amounts of money with no actual product or service and then use those funds to take over existing companies.
Is this a sign that the cryptocurrency industry has begun taking over the internet? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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