Skip to main content

Pirate’s Treasure: How the World’s Leading Torrent Site Pirate Bay Amassed $4.5 Million in Bitcoin

Pirate's Treasure: How the World's Leading Torrent Site Pirate Bay Amassed $4.5 Million in Bitcoin

The Pirate Bay has been the world’s most popular torrent web portal for the last eighteen years. Despite a few hiccups during that time, the site remains accessible via mirrors and proxy websites. In addition to remaining online, Pirate Bay has been accepting bitcoin for donations since 2013 acquiring more than $4.5 million worth since then.

The Pirate Bay’s Bitcoin Stash

Since 2003, when it was founded by the Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, the Pirate Bay has been the most popular, and perhaps the most beloved torrent website in the world. The web portal is basically an index of digital content hosted online so users can download, own, and seed the content via Bittorrent technology.

Of course, in 2009, the Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij got into some trouble over copyright laws. While the founders dealt with prison sentences during that time, the Pirate Bay continued to operate and in 2013, the web portal announced it was accepting bitcoin donations.

Pirate's Treasure: How the World's Leading Torrent Site Pirate Bay Amassed $4.5 Million in Bitcoin

In fact, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin wrote about it during the week the Pirate Bay announced bitcoin support. Buterin discussed the acceptance when he was contributing articles to Bitcoin Magazine in April 2013. The ETH cofounder noted at the time that the Pirate Bay raised over 10 BTC, worth $1,300 that month in 2013, during the first day of donations.

“Other major torrent sites have quickly started to do the same thing,” Buterin said. “EZTV, Openbittorrent, Publicbittorrent, and istole.it have all added bitcoin donation addresses onto their front pages,” he added.

Are Pirate Bay Founders Bitcoin Rich?

Of course, since then the Pirate Bay has changed its bitcoin (BTC) donation address since then and at the end of 2019, speculation was abound concerning how much the site has accumulated over time.

Pirate's Treasure: How the World's Leading Torrent Site Pirate Bay Amassed $4.5 Million in Bitcoin
Pirate Bay cofounder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg.

The first BTC address the Pirate Bay used was mentioned by Buterin in his article and that empty address once held 22.57 BTC. In another publicly known donation address the Pirate Bay leveraged, the operation accumulated 13.37 BTC. But the Pirate Bay also had another BTC address which gathered 76.80 BTC in donations. In the Torrentfreak speculation article, the report adds up the daily income it made between accepting LTC and BTC.

Torrentfreak’s Ernesto Van der Sar added up all the funds received since 2013 and up until 2016, he reported that the Pirate Bay made a donation average of $9.34 per day. Fast forward to 2019 and the researchers disclosed that it had risen to $13.16 per day in BTC and $0.40 per day in litecoin (LTC).

All of the aforementioned BTC addresses have been emptied and onchain analysis shows the coins were consolidated and then mixed using a form of the Coinjoin protocol. The Pirate Bay still gets donations today but they have tapered off a great deal since 2015.

What do you think about the Pirate Bay’s accumulated hoard of bitcoins since 2013? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.



from Bitcoin News https://ift.tt/2YvkGVm
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deep Web Roundup: Dream Adds Monero and Bitcoin Tumbler “Chip Mixer” Launches

The darknet has been quiet of late, which is the way it’s meant to be. No news means no mega busts, honeypots, or mass market shutdowns. Even when it’s out of the spotlight though, the deep web is quietly making news, whether trialling the latest privacy coins or the newest coin mixers that promise to restore a little of the privacy that’s being stripped away from bitcoin users on a daily basis. Also read: U.S. Agency ICE Conducts Investigations That Exploit Blockchain Activity The Battle for Privacy Heats Up Privacy is all relative, but of late there’s been relatively little privacy to be enjoyed by bitcoin users. Blockchain monitoring software is becoming more sophisticated and more common, with U.S. law enforcement agencies using it to profile and hunt down deep web users. Chip Mixer is a relatively new bitcoin tumbler that’s designed to restore some of that privacy. Available on both the clearnet and darknet, the service uses a variety of techniques to obfuscate blockchain m...
10 comments
Read more

International Crypto Exchange Luno Adds Bitcoin Cash Trading

Luno exchange has added bitcoin cash trading to the platform following feedback from its client base. BCH is now only the third cryptocurrency available for trading on the exchange, in addition to BTC and ETH , but more options could be on the way once Luno determines that they are credible enough. Also Read: Bitflyer Adds Bitcoin Cash Trading Across Europe and the US Luno Adds Bitcoin Cash Trading Luno, the London-headquartered company formerly known as Bitx, recently announced that bitcoin cash was made available on its cryptocurrency exchange. Starting from Monday, September 23, customers at Luno are now able to store, buy and sell BCH on the platform. The reason given for adding BCH to the exchange is feedback from users in developing markets that convinced Luno to expand their offering from previously just BTC and ETH . Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of Luno, said , “We are in a new and exciting financial era. Developing economies are leading the large-scale adoption and appli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ombudsman Receives Complaints About Crypto Investments in Spain

The Spanish ombudsman has been receiving complaints about cryptocurrency and how some Spanish citizens investing in these vehicles have lost everything. In his annual report, Angel Gabilondo recognized the rise of cryptocurrencies as a new problem due to the little or no regulation crypto sees in the country. In the same way, the EU has also warned about these assets recently. Spanish Ombudsman Gives His Take on Crypto Angel Gabilondo, the Spanish ombudsman, has given his take regarding cryptocurrencies and the effects they have on citizens investing in some of these projects. Gabilondo said in his yearly report that cryptocurrencies have become “a new problem” during the year examined, with many people having lost all of their funds invested. The report states : Cryptocurrency exchange companies or platforms are not regulated in the legal system, are not subject to any public supervision system, nor do they benefit from deposit guarantee systems. The affected users that sought...
Post a Comment
Read more