As crypto markets tumbled yesterday the BitTorrent token sale kicked off and promptly overloaded the world’s largest exchange where it was hosted.
BTT Gone in 15 Minutes …
The BitTorrent token sale started on Binance Launchpad yesterday amid another crypto market rout which dumped $7 billion in a few hours. Binance posted an announcement with fixed rates for the tokens which were locked in at 1 BTT = 0.00001824 BNB (using a BNB price of 6.58000 USD) and 1 BTT = 0.00447261 TRX (using a TRX price of 0.02683 USD). The BTT token sale has been highly anticipated as a high profile airdrop campaign has also driven momentum for both TRX and BNB leading up the first round.
Yesterday’s initial token sales ran in two simultaneous sessions with buy orders accepted in BNB or TRX. According to the company blog post all 23.76 billion BTT were sold to token sale participants within 13 minutes and 25 seconds for BNB and for the TRX portion all 35.64 billion BTT were sold within 14 minutes and 41 seconds. The BitTorrent team bagged $7 million in fifteen minutes making the ICO 2019’s most successful so far.
Within a very short space of time Binance started to suffer technical issues as high demand overwhelmed the system. CZ took to twitter and posted “Damn, no matter how much you prepare, still have bottleneck issues. Even the caching of caching was over loaded. Still under estimated demand.”
The complaints started to flood in as disgruntled users were faced with error pages instead of being able to buy tokens. Cries of foul play and manipulation were emerging as the company twitter stream was also overwhelmed;
“Nothing but error messages, great job @binance @cz_binance” … “What a joke! #manipulation” … “you gave no chance for the normal people since the first second, only errors” … “always chart manipulated and now that session manipulated” … “what will be $btt price expect when be list on @binance . X5 X10 X20 and who will be rich or richer. maybe binance.”
CZ was quick to respond with an apology blaming technical issues for the problems;
Both sessions concluded. Took about 18 minutes, due to a system issue, would have taken 18 seconds otherwise. Demand was astronomical.
— CZ Binance ??? (@cz_binance) January 28, 2019
Full transparency. The issue experienced today was caused by the "user agreement confirmation" button caching/locking. Most of the stress tests focused on the buy process, this part was not covered thoroughly enough. The order of requests received was preserved.
— CZ Binance ??? (@cz_binance) January 28, 2019
Justin Sun offered free BTT to all of those who failed to buy tokens due to Binance gremlins in yesterday’s sale;
I would like to explore the possibility with @binance to giveaway free $BTT to everyone on launchpad fails to get #BTT today. #BitTorrent community wants you! Not 100% guarantee. Need to figure out detail. BUT RT if you agree! @cz_binance #TRON $BNB $TRX
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) January 28, 2019
Due to overwhelming demands, Tron team generously agreed to do a small airdrop for people who tried to place orders, but was not successful in buying. Exact numbers will be published soon.
— CZ Binance ??? (@cz_binance) January 28, 2019
The sale, however successful, could not prevent both TRX and BNB plunging along with the rest of the market as Bitcoin fell through support again yesterday. At the time of writing TRX was down 6% on the day to $0.27 and BNB dumped 10% to $6.25.
Image from Shutterstock
