Fresh from the news of a surge in parent company TRON’s fortunes, BitTorrent Inc. managed to sell out more than $7 million in tokens in what some are suggesting may be a return of initial coin offerings.

BitTorrent Inc., not to be confused with the file-sharing protocol of the same name, is responsible for the ongoing development of the BitTorrent protocol, but it’s also the provider of leading software clients such as UTorrent.

The ICO of BitTorrent Tokens, a cryptocurrency that runs of the TRON mainnet — which is a blockchain that transfers digital currency from senders to recipients — was announced Jan. 3. It was pitched as a token that could be used to speed up downloads on BitTorrent itself.

In a sale that’s remarkable because ICOs have precipitously declined in popularity over the last 12 months, the initial release of tokens sold in just over 13 minutes, raising approximately $7.2 million in the process.

The BitTorrent Tokens (BTT) could only be purchased in TRON tokens (TRX) or Binance Coin (BNB). That last one is a cryptocurrency issued by cryptocurrency exchange Binance Holdings Ltd., which was a partner in launching BTT. Buyers were limited to $20,000 worth of BTT with a minimum buy of $12 to participate.

According to Ethnews, 60 billion tokens were sold at a valuation of  $0.00012, 6 percent of the total number of tokens that will be ultimately available. An additional 20 percent of tokens will be made available to purchase by those who hold TRX in February.

The appeal of BTT comes from both its potential real-world use as well as its user base. Exactly how the tokens will be used to speed up downloads is yet to be seen, though BitTorrent says that support will be built into UTorrent, the world’s most popular BitTorrent client. The company claims that it has 170 million users a month. If even a small percentage of those embrace BTT that’s millions of potential users that could be using the new cryptocurrency.

Suggesting that a single successful token raise may foretell the return of the ICO frenzy of 2017 is very much a stretch. But the success of the BTT raise does show that tokens with quality support and potential markets can still raise money, even in 2019.

Image: BitTorrent