BitTorrent is one of the early adopters of decentralized computing architecture. Known for its communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), it has been acquired by a blockchain media startup Tron.
Tron was founded by Justin Sun. The company reportedly began pursuing the acquisition of BitTorrent in September 2017 under a "no shop" clause that prevented BitTorrent from engaging in similar talks with other potential buyers.
Shareholders were happy, and the acquisition have sparked talks in the crypto world. BitTorrent was acquired with the price of $140 million, which includes both a cash payment from Sun as well as cash in the company being distributed to shareholders alongside proceeds.
Founded in 2004 by Bram Cohen, BitTorrent said that it has about 170 million users of its products, and has been a while since it started looking for a buyer.
Tron here, is one young company in the blockchain business.
The company's mission is to build "a truly decentralized Internet and its infrastructure," with the creation of TRX, its own cryptocurrency. With a market capitalization of more than $3 billion, Tron is the 10th-largest cryptocurrency in the world at the time, according to data published by CoinMarketCap.
By acquiring BitTorrent, one shareholder said that Tron has two plans with it.
First is to legitimize Tron's business which has met with some controversy: it has been accused of plagiarizing FileCoin and Ethereum in the development of its technology. And second, as a potential network to help mine coins, using BitTorrent's P2P architecture and its network of users.
BitTorrent was one of the pioneers that utilize decentralized network architectures using all the machines in a network as nodes, a contrast with the server-based architectures that dominate the tech world.
BitTorrent is synonymous with "file sharing", and has its own share of bad reputation among copyright holders.
While BitTorrent makes revenues, it hadn’t raised money since 2008. This is why BitTorrent never really took off in its strategy in building a long-term larger business on that technology. Both Akamai and Rovi (TiVo) had both considered buying BitTorrent but nothing came fruitful. Akamai instead acquired Red Swoosh, a BitTorrent competitor that was Travis Kalanick's first startup before Uber, and Rovi moved on in its own.
Since investors and others hoped it would, the acquisition by Tron is breathing a new life for BitTorrent.