BitTorrent, the favorite file sharing service for downloading pirated content and beyond, will now be associated with the work of a company called Tron, the promoter of a less known cryptocurrency called TRX.
According to founder Justin Sun, the $126 million transaction transforms the US company into "the largest decentralized ecosystem in the whole Internet." Already moving to San Francisco-based offices, BitTorrent developers were giving a month's assurance that they "do not plan to change what they are doing or to make changes to their services." However, the new owner's plans may be a little different, Tron being a company focused exclusively on the exploitation of blockchain technology.
One of the possibilities is that the BitTorrent infrastructure could be adapted to facilitate "mining" cryptocurrencies as the file sharing network could co-ordinate workloads between virtual miners. But one thing is certain: BitTorrent and uTorrent customers will not disappear and about 100 million active users will still be able to use the BitTorrent file sharing network for free.
The BitTorrent sale closes a tumultuous chapter in the history of a company that has fought for years to promote the concept of decentralized internet and unrestrained access to information. Between the ambition to provide a full service and the need to operate as a profitable company, BitTorrent has often resorted to unorthodox financing practices by delivering aggressive adware to the uTorrent client until the application itself has been labeled as a malware in programs antivirus and promoting content-bound content services.
Ideally, BitTorrent fans will be able to see their legally downloaded movies and series on their torrent sites, while Tron will provide the necessary funding, using BitTorrent technologies to augment their own cryptocurrency operations. This is another way of adapting current technologies and enhancing them, scaling towards blockchain industry. As more such example will be encountered, that will represent a clear image where the world industry is heading - into a new era, governed (or better said ungoverned) by BLOCKCHAIN technologies.