BitTorrent Inventor Quells False Reports Linking Tron With Chia Crypto Project

Last year, after Tron bought the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent, there were several reports describing a special deal made behind closed doors. According to those reports, Sun also bought a small stake in the Chia Network. Chia is Bram Cohen’s soon-to-be ‘Bitcoin killer’ and ‘cryptocurrency disruptor.’ Cohen is the entrepreneur who invented and launched BitTorrent in July 2001 and sold it to Sun 17 years later for a whopping $120 million. Now, Cohen wants to distance himself from his former company and its latest business decisions — including the issuing of BTT, a Tron-based token used to incentivize BitTorrent’s participants. He also wants the crypto world to know that Tron is not involved, in any way, in Chia Network.

No Tron does not and never has owned any shares in Chia

— Bram Cohen (@bramcohen) January 22, 2019

Cohen: Reports Contain ‘Erroneous Information’

The founder of Chia dismissed all news reports linking Tron with Chia, claiming all such reports contain ‘erroneous information.’ [bctt tweet=”BitTorrent & Chia Founder, Bram Cohen: Reports linking Tron with Chia contain ‘erroneous information.'” username=”beincrypto”] Chia plans to launch its own disruptive token this year. The fundamentals are quite different compared to more traditional cryptocurrencies. There is no high-resource Proof-of-Work involved or a bank-like Proof-of-Stake consensus. Cohen and his team have proposed a different kind of consensus algorithm called Proof-of-Space. In other words, the user won’t need intensive computer processing power or a big investment to acquire tokens. To ‘farm,’ the participant will only need unused disk space and idle bandwidth. Chia claims Proof-of-Space solves Bitcoin’s major problems — including miner centralization, high mining costs, waste, and forking. Moreover, Chia token will support the Lightning Network and atomic swaps right out of the box. The company has already raised $3.4 million in a seed-funding round. The BitTorrent sale did not bring anything new to the table. There was no obligation for Tron to invest in Chia as part of the deal. To further fund the development, Chia is planning a public sale to take place later this year.

Crypto Projects Of 2019: Significant Or Not?

Chia is just one of the many crypto projects that promise breakthroughs in 2019. The team behind the project plans to launch the blockchain by the end of 2019. Already, two coins have hit the cryptocurrency market in a big way. Beam and Grin tokens are both based on the innovative Mimblewimble protocol. Beam promises customizable privacy options and superior scalability, while Grin is all about privacy and usability.   Beam has already experienced its first major problem — only days after the mainnet launch — as the blockchain came to a halt on Jan 21. Mining of blocks was halted for several hours before the developers fixed the bug. With such shaky beginnings, can these new cryptocurrencies build a more stable future? Will Chia and the other major crypto projects of 2019 become truly significant for the industry in the years to come? Share your thoughts in the comments below!