It seems Tron’s BitTorrent token (BTT) has failed to live up to the hype.
Just a few months after its launch, and following a record-setting IEO in January, Binance has delisted the option to trade BitTorrent tokens against Bitcoin.
Earlier today, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume announced that it will remove the BTT trading pair, along with 29 others, from its platform as a way to "to improve liquidity and user trading experience."
BitTorrent’s BTT, launched by Justin Sun’s Tron Foundation, was Binance's first IEO. The sale unloaded 23.76 billion BTT tokens in less than 15 minutes, raising $7 million, according to Binance. However, following the token sale, BTT quickly proved to be yet another example of a crypto project that over-promised and under-delivered.
The price of BitTorrent tokens peaked at 0.00017960 BNB (Binance’s native coin) a few days after its launch, and is now valued at 0.00002618 BNB, according to data from Trading View. Even as early as July, crypto traders who bought in were already complaining that the token’s value had plummeted so much (more than 50 percent) that BTT had become unusable.
Decisions to remove trading pairs on exchanges generally stem from a need to protect prices from the kind of manipulation that can occur in low-liquidity markets. When a token has little movement, it becomes easier for it to experience sudden pumps and dumps.
And the low volume argument for the removal of the BTT-BTC trading appears to hold water. On Twitter, pseudonymous crypto trader “CryptoBatman” put forth the theory that the move is all about driving volume for Binance’s own coin, BNB. To which Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao replied:
Smart man.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) September 30, 2019
Besides BTT, Binance also delisted trading pairs for three tokens that were simiarly launched on its IEO platform: Elrond (ERD), Harmony (ONE) and WINk (WIN). Binance has also halted trading pairs for NXPS—PundiX's native token—Dogecoin, and all of Ankr pairs against stablecoins.
According to Binance’s statement, it was, in fact, the leadership behind some of these projects that requested that such action be taken. That idea was later corroborated by Zac Cheah, CEO and cofounder of PundiX, who confirmed on Twitter that Binance effectively sought to protect his company’s token from toxic speculation.