BitTorrent Sells to TRON Cryptocurrency Founder Justin Sun

BitTorrent Inc, the parent company behind the popular file-sharing client uTorrent, has reportedly sold to Justin Sun, the founder of cryptocurrency TRON. The company’s employees were informed about the deal last week but were cautioned not to talk to the press. It is expected that uTorrent and other BitTorrent products will remain available, as usual.

Last month we were the first to report that Justin Sun, the entrepreneur behind the popular cryptocurrency TRON, was in the process of acquiring BitTorrent Inc.

The San-Francisco based file-sharing company confirmed the interest from Sun but noted that the acquisition was not yet 100% finalized.

This position appears to have shifted in the weeks that followed. Last week Sun’s company Rainberry Aquisition filed paperwork related to a merger at California Secretary of State, Variety reports, and BitTorrent did the same.

BitTorrent changed its name to Rainberry last year, and new information suggests that the acquisition by Sun was recently finalized.

This is further backed up by Variety which learned that BitTorrent management informed employees about the deal last week. The staffers were told not to share any information with the press, but word got out eventually.

It’s unclear how much was paid for the acquisition. Sun’s plans for BitTorrent also remain a mystery.

In the short term, not much is expected to change. However, it could be that Sun will eventually use BitTorrent’s user base of over 100 million users to popularize TRON even further. With the acquisition, Sun will also own several BitTorrent patents, including one for P2P live streaming.

TRON is one of the hottest and most controversial cryptocurrencies. After a successful ICO, it now has a market cap of more than $3 billion, which is surpassed by few others.

The TRON mainnet, which went live two weeks ago, has the ultimate goal to “decentralize the web.” BitTorrent would fit well in this picture, especially since the TRON whitepaper mentions torrents as one of its pillars.