Ask Me Anything with Justin Sun and Binance - Recap
If you missed the AMA hosted by Binance and Justin Sun on Telegram on February 27th, you probably missed a very good opportunity to learn more about what we’ve been up to those last months, what’s next, and ask the questions you always had in mind.
But don’t worry! We prepared a recap of the AMA so you can be up to date on the latest news and you will find below all the questions our CEO Justin Sun answered.
Before diving in, we wanted to thank Binance for organizing this AMA and our community for participating! We look forward to sharing more updates with you very soon and answering your questions during our next AMA.
Intro
Justin Sun is the founder of TRON, CEO of BitTorrent Inc. and founder the of Callme (Peiwo) app, which is an audio community with more than 10M users. TRON is among the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the world and Peiwo is one of the largest voice live streaming apps in China. Justin was named 2017 Forbes 30 under 30 Asia and Forbes 30 under 30 China from 2015 to 2017. He is the only millennial graduate from Hupan University established by Jack Ma, Chairman of the Alibaba Group. Justin obtained a Master’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania after he received a Bachelors from Peking University. Since July 24, 2018, TRON acquired BitTorrent, one of the first decentralized applications, promoting a free internet governed by peers since 2004.
To keep fostering this openness, enhance an already successful ecosystem and bring mass-adoption to blockchain, a team of 20 people worked day and night to launch a utility token running under TRON and power the largest blockchain based application, BitTorrent Speed.
TRON is one of the largest blockchain protocols based on the number of transactions, number of accounts, number of decentralized applications using its protocol, token holders and commits within the developer community on Github.
Since BitTorrent launched BTT less than a month ago, the company already achieved quite a few milestones including:
- One of the largest airdrops ever organized to reward TRON TRX holders
- Listing on major exchanges and wallets to make BTT available to most people
- BTT supported on Coinpayments to give flexibility to BitTorrent users who can now pay for our pro products offering ad-free, malware protection and VPN capability. BTT is also supported as a payment method on hundreds of websites
- BTT card to give more flexibility to our token holders to pay for goods and services online and offline
Now that BTT is widely accessible, the team is seeking to offer early access to its second blockchain based product BitTorrent Speed, an application rewarding BitTorrent/uTorrent users for seeding files and sharing bandwidth. Available in Q2 2019 on its most popular product uTorrent Classic Windows.
The BitTorrent community is invited to visit our website and sign up to get a chance to receive early access to BitTorrent Speed.
Questions and Answers
Q: “BTT is the first relatively important token issued on TRON and the industry has been extremely enthusiastic about it. It is fair to say that BTT has done quite well in the current bearish market. Do you think the popularity of BTT will last?”
A: “Definitely. First, BTT is not a one-off project. BitTorrent has a great user base with close to 100 million active users around the world, and this number has not changed much or dropped in the past 16 years from 2003 until now. As a dominating P2P application, it has proven to be more trustworthy than Bitcoin, which only existed 10 years ago, while BitTorrent has a history of 16 years. There are reasons why BTT has been favored by people in the industry. We do not even need to hype it up. Therefore, I am not worried about its popularity. BTT is very different from some overly hyped projects on the Internet which were just a flash in the pan.”
Q: “On BTT Airdrop Instructions — BTT will airdrop to TRX holders for 6 consecutive years. Why is the airdrop on such a big scale?”
A: “This is a program to give our users early access to our product, and to encourage them to stick with us for the long term. We are not only airdropping to TRX holders, but also giving the BTT token to BitTorrent users through the clients. We expect over 100M active users will get to know about cryptocurrency and the first one they will experience will be BTT. For reference, Bitcoin has only 10M.
This is also beneficial to everyone in the crypto industry. BitTorrent is a great opportunity for us to bring cryptocurrency to a massive new user base. Everyone, from exchanges to our competitors will benefit from our BTT launch unlocking this new audience and getting them familiar with cryptocurrency. I think returning to a bull market depends on gaining mass adoption and on when that mass adoption can be achieved.”
Q: “Do you think BitTorrent and BTT will bring new users to blockchain?”
A: “Absolutely. I will give you an example. We will provide BTT as an early access mechanism to the 100 million active users and most of them are not cryptocurrency users. However, the 100 million users are the targeted users, and they share a lot of similarities with crypto users. Firstly, they are interested in decentralized technologies and are using peer-to-peer technology. Secondly, the majority of BitTorrent users are males between 25 and 35 years old, which is also a group very interested in cryptocurrency. Therefore, when the 100 million users receive BTT airdrops, they will start to wonder what BTT is, and what cryptocurrency is, and start to investigate.”
Q: “What is BitTorrent’s positioning? A super DApp on TRON or something more?”
A: “First of all, it is of course a DApp on TRON but it will play a bigger role as time goes on. Currently, we have three positionings. Firstly, Bandwidth Sharing, which means downloading will be faster with BTT. The current P2P downloading relies on seeding with no incentive mechanism. Xunlei (also known as the “Vampire Thunder”) even launched a feature which stopped uploading when the download is finished in order to save data. But if everyone follows, then BitTorrent wouldn’t work because it uses the P2P Protocol to upload. Now, users who continue uploading when they finish downloads will be rewarded. This means that more people will join the seeding. Actually, it is good for everyone. You don’t need to pay to download a resource. But with more people seeding, you have more node choices.
The second positioning is decentralized storage. Right now we’re working to assemble a team to research this option and will share the preliminary plan and announcement with our community soon.
The third one is decentralized content distribution network (CDN). BitTorrent is advocating a concept of a sharing-based decentralized economy where users can contribute resources to make the network more robust for all.”
Q: “After its built into clients, you say BTT can be applied on a massive scale with the existing tens of millions of users. Are you concerned with the pressure brought by such a great number of users? Previous BitTorrent executive member Morris said that TRON has not achieved the TPS required by BitTorrent. What is your response?”
A: “Currently, we adopt a hybrid solution. We will not put every single file fragment or transaction on chain. Instead, we will open a channel for it, and only register a transaction for the overall result when a transfer is complete.
We have stated this solution in the BTT White Paper. Only when users want to move a BTT balance onto the blockchain, the main chain will enter the scene. During other times, file transfers are done off-chain. With this solution, TRON’s TPS can fully meet the requirements of BitTorrent.”
Q: “Will BitTorrent launch its own independent MainNet?”
A: “No. BitTorrent’s most outstanding asset is its P2P network while TRON’s strength is in the blockchain. Therefore, both should draw on each other’s strength, and in this case, we have always been thinking about the integration between the network of TRON and that of BitTorrent.”
Q: “Can you give a high-level overview of how BTT will work on the BitTorrent platform? Will users opt-in to receive BTT for seeding or is everyone automatically receiving BTT when they seed?”
A: “Let me back up and explain to you why we created BTT first. BitTorrent is the largest and one of the most established decentralized protocols in the world. Millions of people are using it every day, and prior to the acquisition last summer, the BitTorrent team was looking for ways to enhance its protocol and better serve its users. After talking with the BitTorrent team we decided to integrate a token economy directly within the client and allow people to bid tokens in exchange for bandwidth sharing, increasing download speed and file availability.
We are currently testing the effect of token bidding on swarm performance and doing user testing of a wallet and bidding user interface. In the coming months, BitTorrent users selected for our early access group will be able to start testing BitTorrent Speed. In the future, over 100M will have the possibility to use BTT, get what they want faster, and earn from sharing. BitTorrent Speed will be automatically enabled on the clients, we will have a wallet and an on-chain/off-chain exchange running under TRON’s blockchain directly on BitTorrent clients. This is probably one of the biggest achievement blockchain has seen in a while, we can imagine this mechanism evolving and serving so many applications in the future, this is truly exciting! Check out the whitepaper.”
Q: “What other use cases will support BTT out of BitTorrent Speed?”
A: “We are currently working on a new live/social media app and looking for ways to integrate BTT on it! By doing that we aim to empower a new generation of content creators to distribute their content without middleman and offer a very authentic channel for the fans to connect with their idols and the content creators with their audience.
As the development goes forward, we are also looking for ways to work further with our external partners and bring additional use-cases to the BitTorrent and TRON ecosystem. We are also focused on making sure BTT offers maximum flexibility to its holders and get accepted outside of the ecosystem. We will be giving more details very soon.”
Q: “Why is BitTorrent powered by BTT and not TRX?”
A: “The BitTorrent user base is huge (~100M MAU), so we can’t provide enough TRX to them bootstrap the economy without diluting the value of TRX.
TRX is used as a utility token within the TRON blockchain (for powering smart contracts, electing SRs, etc.) BTT is a utility token used to mediate the exchange of resources (bandwidth, storage, etc.) between users’ systems.
Since BTT is a TRC-10 token, TRX and BTT are like a razor and a blade. It’s really important for me to give access to BTT to the TRON community and reward the TRX holders so we decided to create a 6 years long program to airdrop 10% of the total circulating supply which is pretty unique within the crypto space. The more successful BTT is, the more successful TRX will be.”
Q: “How can users get early access to BitTorrent Speed?”
A: “Super simple: just visit the BitTorrent Speed landing, signup, and you will get a chance to be selected and receive early access to try BitTorrent Speed! https://www.bittorrent.com/speed”
Q: “We know that the TRON network will have a version upgrade on February 28. How is this upgrade different from the previous ones? What are some examples of significant upgrades in the past? How much improvement comes with this one, and what does it do to the future?”
A: “This MainNet upgrade is a significant one for TRON since last December. Previous upgrades were mainly for setting up the network, while this upgrade is the first major improvement of the network performance. Its future benefits are: 1. Greatly improve the network performance; 2. Pave ways for institutions to access TRON.”
Q: “We see that there are 6 key improvements with this upgrade. Can you tell us more about some key features and the changes to expect from them?”
A: “Multi-signature is essential to institutional investors and investors with high net worth, because institutional investors usually use institutionalized approaches to keep cryptocurrency assets, which are managed by multiple parties and with multi-layer procedures. Therefore, multi-signature allows multi-layer management of cryptocurrencies. It’s fair to say that without multi-signature, there will not be institutional investors. We also announced a partnership with BitGo, the largest cryptocurrency custodian company. This paves the way to institutional investors.”
Q: “Awesome! Okay, one last question from then on to the fun stuff! What is the core business value for TRON? What kind of company does TRON see itself becomes eventually?”
A: “TRON is a new ecosystem, an operating system based on the Internet. Moving on, it’s my hope that TRON is going to be able to support most online entertainment for all people, just like iOS and Android, serving developers and users around the world in an open-source, free, equal and distributive way.”
Q: @grimbean “Since Live streaming via BitTorrent speed will be implemented soon. Can you please give some details on how will this work? How will seeders participate in such activities? Will incentives differ with just regular file sharing?”
A: “First, BitTorrent Speed is not the same product as our upcoming Live product. BitTorrent Speed is all about improving the incentives built into the bittorrent protocol to make downloads faster and to create more seeds and better file availability. The Live product is coming in end of March and will be continuously improved in Q2 in our Android clients. For the Live product, we are exploring the possibility of decentralized live streaming to dramatically reduce the cost and latency of streaming and improve the user experience. More details coming in Q2.”
Q: @Clender Herrera “Justin, do you see millennials coming to crypto in the next few years? If so, how will you attract them to the community?”
A: “I think millennials will become one of the largest crypto communities. Crypto is the native currency of the internet. Millennials grew up with the internet, so they have been exposed to technology and the internet from the cradle. Older generations are still becoming comfortable with the internet and are used to fiat currency. Eventually, millenials and later generations will start to think of fiat currency as strange and cryptocurrency as normal. TRON is focused on entertainment, which is a very important category for millenials and for mass adoption generally, and we are also focused on user experience and ease of use, to make things accessible for a mass audience.”
Q: @High090 “What’s your favorite color of Lambo?”
A: “TRON Red, but if I can’t get that color, I would be fine with Avocado Green.”
Q: @Ederson M. “When will the current supply BTT in coinmarketcap be updated?”
A: “Our tech team is working closely with coinmarketcap to finish the API so that the current supply will be displayed. If everything goes well, you will see the update next week.”
Q: @Pablonsky “The negotiations for the speed in the BitTorrent clients will be automatically done by the client itself or the users should have to actively take part in those negotiations?”
A: “The clients will bid with each other automatically in order to speed up downloads and earn for seeding. Users will be able to control the feature at a high level, but they won’t need to take active part in every negotiation. Because we have this autobid mechanism, users don’t need to worry about micromanaging their client, checking the exact exchange rate, etc. We are very focused on making our products easy to use so that they can be adopted by a mass audience.”
