BitTorrent Inc., a company synonymous with “file sharing” system is finally sold to Justin Sun, founder of blockchain media start-up TRON. No official authority has disclosed details regarding the takeover, however, TechCrunch confirms that BitTorrent is being sold for $140 million in cash to TRON.
BitTorrent, a pioneer in developing a concept based on decentralized computing architecture to share and store data, has a user base of 170 million. Though it was one of the hottest start-ups of Silicon Valley in 2004 with a breakthrough technology, BitTorrent did not augment as expected. The immature management practices created hurdles in the roadmap of the tech company’s growth.
On the other hand, Justin Sun founded TRON on a similar concept as of BitTorrent, that is, “to create a decentralized Internet and its infrastructure”. In a tech world dominated by server-based infrastructure, TRON intends to build a more secure blockchain platform and for this, it has invented its own Cryptocurrency TRX.
The new Cryptocurrency TRX could be seen as a payment mode for TRON’s entertainment content. The price of a TRX coin is valued at $0.045 with overall market cap for TRX bulk is kept under $4.78 billion.
Merger after a Bump
First reported by TorrentFreak last month, Sun was in the process of acquiring San Francisco-based file-sharing company since September 2017. Both the companies were in talks for a long time and finally in January this year Sun signed a letter of intent for the purchase.
But the deal was put on hold for some time as TRON filed a lawsuit against BitTorrent because it broke a “NO SHOP” clause agreed in the letter of intent.
Sun claimed in the lawsuit, as TorrentFreak cited “Within literally hours after the parties agreed to the Letter of Intent, and after Ro Choy, (CEO of BitTorrent) began performing the terms of the Letter of Intent, Defendant claims it received three ‘superior’ bids from companies that David Chao admitted they had been communicating with.”
The complaint was taken down by Justin Sun immediately. Post the incident, TRON and BitTorrent had kept all the details about a possible merger under wraps.
Meanwhile, BitTorrent changed the name of its corporate entity to Rainberry Inc. Interestingly, at the similar duration, a holding company titled, Rainberry Acquisition was registered in California. Later on, it was found out that it was registered by none other than Justin Sun. Analyzing the co-incidents, rumors furnished that the deal is moving forward.
Variety subsequently learned that the acquisition formalities between TRON and BitTorrent finished the previous month. Even the company staff is informed about the purchase however they are advised to remain tightlipped about the same.
Leveraging BitTorrent Architecture to TRON
The Blockchain start-up TRON basically aims to be a trading platform. It has recently launched a MainNet distributed ledger for decentralizing the web world. While TRON has still not disclosed how it will reap benefits from BitTorrent, it is apparent that the latter’s peer-to-peer architecture and wide user network could amplify TRON’s popularity.
