The Pirate Bay has begun accepting contributions from the public, allowing users to donate exclusively via the P2P crypto-currency Bitcoin. One of the advantages for the operators of the infamous BitTorrent site is that Bitcoin funds can't easily be seized or traced back to a person. The downside, on the other hand, is that everything that's sent to a Bitcoin address is public, so the entire world can see how many virtual coins are rolling in.

In a few months time The Pirate Bay turns 10 years old, a milestone that will be celebrated with a massive party in the Swedish city of Stockholm.

All this time the BitTorrent site has relied on banner advertisements and has never accepted money from the public.

There was the Sealand money drive, and occasionally The Pirate Bay encouraged users to spend money on pirate swag or their affiliated VPN service, but direct donations were never an option.

This changed today. The Pirate Bay is now listing a Bitcoin address in the footer of all its webpages. While there are no instructions attached to the string of alphanumeric characters, it is assumed that the torrent site is inviting the public to share some wealth.

Using Bitcoin makes sense for the mysterious and privacy concerned Pirate Bay operators. After all, the crypto-currency can’t be seized by the authorities, nor is it easy to find out who is keeping the bounty.

All Bitcoin transactions go from one anonymous peer to another and don’t require a middleman, much like BitTorrent.

TPB BTC Aye

Thus far the silent donation drive appears to be a great success. In just over a day 73 transactions were transferred into Pirate Bay’s purse, adding up to a healthy 5.56 BTC. At the current exchange rate this is good for $700 but this can vary quite a bit from hour to hour.

The fact that all donations are visible for the rest of the world is perhaps also one of the major drawbacks. The Pirate Bay appears to be using just one address for now, which makes it very easy for the public to track the billions of dollars that may come in.

For now, however, this doesn’t seem to bother The Pirate Bay too much.

Update: EZTV (and ezRSS) has also added Bitcoin donations. A trend is emerging.

Update: Standalone trackers OpenBittorrent, PublicBitTorrent and istole have added a Bitcoin address as well. Torrent storage caches Zoink and Torrage have joined in as well.