The TRON price exploded by 94 percent on Thursday after the decentralized content distribution platform’s founder teased a major partnership with a publicly-listed company. Its token, TRX, is up 150% in a 24-hour period at press time. TRON Price Leaps 90 Percent on ThursdayAs reported by CCN sister site Hacked, the TRON price broached $0.16 this morning, capping off a run that has seen the four-month-old cryptocurrency surge by 400 percent during the first week of 2018. At this level, TRON has an $11 billion market cap, making it the ninth most valuable cryptocurrency and ranking it above perennial heavyweights such as dash, monero, and ethereum classic. Amazingly, TRON is now worth just $1.6 billion less than litecoin, which has started the new year with a multi-day decline. Source: CoinMarketCapTRON’s rally has been accompanied by an explosion in trading volume. In the last 24 hours, Binance has processed more than $2.1 billion worth of TRX trades against BTC and ETH trading pairs, and TRON has also seen significant trading volume on South Korean exchange Coinnest. Source: CoinMarketCapTRON Founder Teases Major PartnershipTRON’s price increase is predicated on investor speculation that major companies are preparing to begin using TRON’s nascent content distribution platform. This speculation is not unfounded. In the past week, TRON founder Justin Sun has posted two tweets teasing partnerships with public companies. The first, posted on Tuesday, stated that NASDAQ-listed companies with more than 100 million users had contacted TRON seeking to form partnerships. “We will be huge soon,” he said. More partnerships are coming! Even #NASDAQ listed companies and the giant companies with more than 100 million users started to contact us for partnership. We will be huge soon! #TRON #TRX $TRX— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) January 2, 2018The second, posted Thursday morning, said that TRON had formed a partnership with a “very prestigious public company” and would reveal the details next week. We will announce our partnership with a very prestigious public listed company next week. Looking forward to it!— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) January 4, 2018These tweets have understandably increased demand for TRON, as investors believe it could see both short- and long-term price gains. However, prospective buyers should keep in mind that it is easy to let one’s imagination run wild, and announcements do not always live up to the hype. Moreover, as spelled out in the TRON whitepaper, the platform will not reach its full implementation for at least several years, although the strength of the project’s development team, which includes a number of former Alibaba developers, will likely give many investors the confidence to hold onto their tokens for the long haul. Write to Josiah Wilmoth at josiah.wilmoth(at)ccn.com. Featured image from Shutterstock