Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance has found itself in hot water over the recent listing of the Tron-backed BitTorrent digital currency, which currently trades under the BTT ticker.
Users on social media websites, especially Twitter, did not respond positively to the news — for a few different reasons. While some claimed that the token was only sold to a very small and exclusive pool of investors, others expressed displeasure at a technical outage that prevented them from purchasing BTT tokens on the exchange.
The drama first unfolded when Binance announced the successful listing of BTT on its platform.
Notably, Binance’s Launchpad was selected as BitTorrent’s exclusive token launch platform and held the initial coin offering (ICO) sale of BitTorrent tokens on Jan 28, 2019. BTT could be bought in exchange for Binance’s own BNB token, as well as Tron coins (TRX).
An additional airdrop of BTT was given out to users that were not able to purchase the tokens during the outage. Each user received 5,000 BTT as compensation. At an exchange rate of 0.00001824 BNB per BTT, many on Twitter claimed that the reimbursement was not even enough to cover for Binance Coin’s volatility before and after the sale.
I know it’s not big money but a bought $400 worth of #BNB & intended to buy 3Bn #BTT on launchpad. The system crashed for 15 minutes & then was told I was too late. Because of Binance’s error #BNB tanked 12.5% & my $400 was now worth $350. Thanks for the $0.60 compensation!?!?!
— drew smally (@sma11y2593) January 30, 2019
Others expressed concerns over the token sale being accessed by a very small subset of the eligible user base.
While Binance did not disclose any exact figures, the per-person purchase limit allowed users to purchase a rather large percentage of the available supply. The exchange’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, later said that the decision was made on the end of Launchpad and not Tron or BitTorrent.
Zhao also did not spare the opportunity to call out the criticism on Twitter, calling disgruntled responses “salty.”
Some salty comments here. No one is forcing you to buy any coin. We simply provide a method for people who do. I have a feeling most of the salty comments come from people who wants to buy the coin badly. We will see. https://t.co/VottD2IlrH
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 30, 2019
Did you miss out on a chance to buy BTT on Binance Launchpad? What do you think of Zhao’s response? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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