BitTorrent v2 (2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401999 - 2020, 1227 points, 562 comments

i do love that it immediately goes into yet another crypto bashing comment chain while not realising that a crypto company owns bittorrent:

https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-inc-confirms-acquisition...

and that after the creator of bittorrent left he created his own cryptocurrency:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chia_(cryptocurrency)

I assume this is being posted because qBittorrent recently released version 4.4 which includes libtorrent 2.x and therefore support for BitTorrent v2.

Hopefully we'll start seeing hybrid torrents/magnets in trackers soon. Although these are mostly automated so I'm not sure how fast the tools will catchup.

One thing I'd like qBittorrent and other torrent clients to do is to allow users to upgrade v1 torrents to hybrid torrents if they're fully seeded, this would allow cross polination for old torrents where peers are scattered between the original torrent and batch torrents, or where trackers add extra files causing the v1 hash to change.

Does Libtorrent have anything todo with Rainberry fka. Bittorrent Inc.? They seem to be the ones working on the protocol nowadays.

Reading through the wikipedia page for Chia

> The Chia Network was founded in 2017 by American computer programmer Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent protocol.[4] In China stockpiling ahead of the May 2021 launch led to shortages and an increase in the price of hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD).[5] Shortages were also reported in Vietnam.[6] Phison, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company, estimated that SSD prices will rise by 10% in 2021 as a result of Chia.[7] Hard drive manufacturer Seagate said in May 2021 that the company was experiencing strong orders and that staff were working to "adjust to market demand".[6] In May 2021 Gene Hoffman, the president of Chia Network, admitted that "we’ve kind of destroyed the short-term supply chain" for hard disks.[8] Concerns have also been raised about the mining process also potentially being harmful to drives' lifetime.[9]

Thankfully the coin seems to have collapsed completely since May 2021 (https://www.coinbase.com/price/chia-network)

But you can see why people are skeptical