Pirate Bay is Not Getting Rich From Bitcoin Donations…

The Pirate Bay has been both an early adopter and a pioneer when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

The popular torrent site first embraced Bitcoin in 2013 and soon after many other pirate sites followed suit.

The advantage of bitcoin donations is that they are relatively anonymous. This is an upside for the operators, but also a major concern for rightsholders who feared that it may become a stable revenue stream that can’t be touched.

The RIAA, for example, previously told the U.S. Trade Representative that Bitcoin could make it harder to crack down on pirate sites.

“There are no central authority or banks involved which makes it very difficult to seize or trace Bitcoin funds,” the music industry group wrote in a letter.

While it’s no secret that Bitcoin is indeed fueling some criminal operations, The Pirate Bay’s donations certainly can’t keep the notorious torrent site afloat. Today, more than six years after the site first accepted cryptocurrency donations, it adds up to little more than a small daily tip.

If we take a look at The Pirate Bay’s most recent Bitcoin legacy address, which it started advertising late 2017, we see that a total of 0.49 Bitcoin was received. Translated to US dollars (current value for simplicity purposes), this is $4,838, or $7.63 per day.

The Bitcoin Segwit address looks more promising. Here we see a total of 1.48 BTC coming in. However, on closer inspection, most of that comes from one transaction which was sent by TPB’s old Bitcoin wallet, so we scrapped that.

This leaves us with 0.33, or $3,255, which adds another $5.13 per day. It’s worth noting that more than half of this came from one donation. It came from a rather generous person apparently, as he or she also sent roughly the same amount to ProtonMail.

Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency The Pirate Bay accepts of course. The torrent site also lists a Litecoin and Monero address. Monero can’t be tracked, but the Litecoin address received 3.40 LTC, or $252, which is $0.40 per day.

When we add up all these figures we come to a total of $13.16 per day, which clearly can’t keep The Pirate Bay afloat.

That said, the Bitcoin donation income is relatively stable. When we did the same calculations a few years ago, we arrived at a donation average of $9.34 per day. At the time, one Bitcoin was about $425, so if the site didn’t sell any, the value will have gone up remarkably.

That brings us to the unavoidable “what if.” Looking back further, we see other Pirate Bay Bitcoin wallets dating back as far as 2013, which received dozens of BTC. At the time that wasn’t worth that much (1BTC ~ $120, May 2013), but the position is different today. If the team kept those, of course.

Perhaps that’s TPB’s long-term exit strategy. If one Bitcoin eventually reaches a value of over a million dollars, The Pirate Bay crew may start thinking of their retirement and buying an island. Sealand anyone?

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