Torrent giant The Pirate Bay uses visitors’ computers to mine digital currency

Site is using a miner provided by Coinhive to convert the CPU power of users into Monero coins

We all know that the popular torrent websites like The Pirate Bay rely on donations as well as ads to generate revenues. But at times when donations are down and revenue generated through ads is not enough to keep running the engine, they have to be creative to able to sustain.

While there’s nothing wrong in being creative and utilising the resources at hand, hiding a cryptocurrency minor and using visitors CPUs to mine the digital currency is total different ball game.



And that’s exactly what Pirate Bay tried to do when it embedded a Javascript cryptocurrency miner to its site. The torrent giant, which is no stranger to digital currencies as it was one of the first torrent sites to add an option to donate through Bitcoin and still lists its address on the website, is using a miner provided by Coinhive that enables site owners to convert the CPU power of users into Monero coins.

The revelation came into the limelight after some users noticed that their CPU usage increased significantly when they visited the website. Though the miner is throttled at different, it still increases the CPU usage dramatically.



However, the miner is not enabled site-wide. According to Torrent Freak, the miner is embedded in “the search results and category listings, but not on the homepage or individual torrent pages.”

In a statement posted on the website, the Pirate Bay said it was testing a new way to generate revenues as they wanted to get rid of ads. Further, the website owners said the miner has been restricted to run in one tab only even if you have 10 tabs open adding that the mining can be blocked using an ad-blocker.

“As you may have noticed we are testing a Monero javascript miner. This is only a test. We really want to get rid of all the ads. But we also need enough money to keep the site running.”

“Let us know what you think in the comments. Do you want ads or do you want to give away a few of your CPU cycles every time you visit the site? Of course the mining can be blocked by a normal ad-blocker.”

“Note: Initially there was a small typo so all CPU for a client was used. This should be corrected now so only 20-30% should be used. Also it is restricted to run in one tab only so even if you have 10 tabs oven it will only be running in 1.”

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This article originally appeared on Torrent Freak