While all of these mechanisms still exist today, there has been a tightening of restrictions.

Pressure is being applied to advertisers like never before and outfits such as PayPal are clamping down on payment processing for file-sharing sites. Unless they successfully pass through PayPal’s pre-approval system, facilities can be withdrawn in an instant.

File-hosting sites have suffered a great deal from this new regime too, and the signs are that private torrent sites – who rely heavily on donations – are also feeling the pain. Both are generally unwelcome to do business with PayPal and the signs are that companies such as Mastercard and Visa are also hardening their stances too.

However, as these forces come into play, sites are looking to augment their income by other means and as we’ve seen recently the crypto-currency BitCoin is appearing more regularly on file-sharing sites and services.

More and more VPN and seedbox companies are accepting BitCoin payments and last week The Pirate Bay added their BitCoin link to the site’s main page.

The site has never accepted donations from its users but the decision to add this anonymous chip-in option has turned out well. In just seven days the site has received a total of 174 Bitcoin donation transactions with a value today of around $2,000, a decent amount that could stretch out to more than $100,000 over the next 12 months.

While BitCoin (BTC) is definitely the number one player in the crypto-currency market, there are other options, some of which claim technical improvements over BTC making them more usable on a day to day basis. The Pirate Bay has just added donation support for one such currency – LiteCoin.

LiteCoin is a peer-to-peer currency based on the BitCoin protocol and is the number two player in the market. One LTC is currently worth just over $3.70, a far cry from a single BTC’s value of around $140 at the time of writing.

Nevertheless, according to its creators LiteCoin (LTC) boasts a couple of advantages. Unlike BitCoin, LiteCoin can still be mined on consumer hardware, and where BitCoin transaction times can sit between ten minutes and an hour, LTC takes a couple of minutes.

At the time of writing The Pirate Bay had received 50.6 LTC so getting rich by this mechanism will take a considerable time yet. Still, it’s money they would’ve never had and when added to the BitCoins already coming in it helps to pay the bills.

The question now is that considering the building pressure from authorities and payment processing companies, how long will it take for currencies such as BitCoin and LiteCoin to become a viable means of keeping file-sharing sites alive. Adaption and evolution in response to aggressive market forces isn’t only something that entertainment industry companies have to think about.

Know a torrent or file-sharing related site that accepts BitCoin, LiteCoin or similar currency? Please let us know.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.