BitTorrent inventor walks away after TRON acquisition

BitTorrent inventor, Bram Cohen, appears to have quietly left BitTorrent Inc, after its acquisition by TRON earlier this month.

TorrentFreak reports that Bram Cohen has severed ties with BitTorrent Inc, the company that he founded in 2004, after inventing and launching his Torrent protocol three years earlier.

There has been no official announcement from TRON or the BitTorrent inventor on this development. TorrentFreak received an auto-response after trying to reach out to Cohen’s BitTorrent email, it became clear that the address was no longer active.

Cohen later confirmed that he is no longer involved with TRON, meaning that BitTorrent’s integration with Justin Sun’s blockchain ecosystem will go on without its founder.

This development comes less than a month after TRON’s acquisition of BitTorrent that saw Justin Sun’s company drop $140 million, in cash, for the deal.

As part of the acquisition, TRON plans to integrate with BitTorrent, bringing 100 million new users to its platform. TRON has previously stated that integrating BitTorrent will help “legitimize” their business, but exactly how, is still a work in progress.

It appears that TRON’s aim is to monetize BitTorrent traffic; one way that can work is by paying TRX to seeders.

It perhaps isn’t surprising to see Cohen step away. Historically, he has been vocal in his contempt of cryptocurrency, regularly citing issues with inefficient mining processes – not to mention his claim that Bitcoin is fundamentally flawed.

However, Cohen still believes that Bitcoin can be done better, and more efficiently. His Twitter bio now reads, “Creator of BitTorrent. Now doing cryptocurrency stuff.”

It was perhaps too much for the inventor of BitTorrent to see his creation taken in a direction that he didn’t agree with. At least now he’ll have more time to try and make Bitcoin “better.”