Quick update: There seems to be more demand for bandwidth rather than watertight privacy. ;-) So Coinado will be moving to clearnet! You can already check it out at  https://coinado.io/ - also free at the moment!

Thanks to all testers for putting the system through its paces!

Good to know, thanks! I will incorporate that into the next update.

True, although you might be surprised, Tor isn't the trickle of bandwidth it was in the past. But the real goal here is not speed, but privacy. A VPN's "no log policy" is all good and well, but there is always the risk, that in some future crack down on filesharing via VPN those businesses will just be run by law enforcement for a while, logging whatever they need to build a massive case against a bunch of people. It might be a small risk, but Coinado is torrenting for the paranoid. ;-)

Promotional offer: To kick things off, the service is free for the next few days! Enjoy! :-)

Try any torrent info hash, for example this one for "Big Buck Bunny":


I would also appreciate feedback regarding download speeds. Obviously the privacy of Tor comes at a cost, but it would be great to hear what your experience here is!

Bitfetch was a cool service, I used it all the time. Great to see UnTorrent.Me stepping up as a successor!

As there has been a bit of discussion around the various alternatives, allow me to also pitch my service: Coinado provides anonymous remote torrenting via a Tor hidden service. Read the announcement for more details. Cheers!

Update: To kick things off, the service is free for the next few days! Enjoy! :-)

I'm excited to announce the launch of Coinado - a remote torrenting solution running as a hidden service on the Tor network.

What is Coinado?

Coinado downloads any public torrent file and streams it to you via the Tor network, allowing you to stay completely anonymous.

Pricing is 0.10 USD/GiB, payable in Bitcoin, which gets you three things:

• You are a good Bittorrent citizen, as Coinado seeds every downloaded torrent to a ratio of 2 or up to 12 hours, whichever happens first.
• You are a good Tor citizen and contribute any bandwidth back that was used in the bulk transfer. For every 1 GB of data transferred another 10 GB are provided to the Tor network to account for overhead and leave room to spare.
• Complete privacy and peace of mind.

How to use Coinado

The service is designed to be used from the command line. You just provide the info hash of a torrent and a few seconds later the file streams to you:


Or, if you prefer not to use the simple helper script:



How to get started

The service is currently targeted at Linux users. The first step is to get Tor running. On Debian-based systems you can simply install the Tor package:


Then we download the Coinado script, which also creates a new account for us:


Inspect the script - it's very short - to assure yourself that it is harmless.  It is a very simple wrapper around wget, so that you do not have to type out the hidden service address and other things each time:


Run './coinado balance' to see the balance of your new account and a Bitcoin address which can be used to fund it:


After funding your account, you are ready to download files. To do so, you need to provide the info hash of the torrent you would like to access. Your favorite torrent directory will probably provide the info hash. KickassTorrents, for example, lists it on the tab 'technical' at the bottom as 'torrent hash'.

The standard download mode is 'auto', which selects the largest file from the torrent you specify via the info hash and only downloads that file:


Alternatively, you can search for something in the names of the files included in the torrent and the first match will be downloaded. This is great for something like a TV show torrent, where you can select a specific episode:


As the download progresses, your account is charged for each byte transferred. So you only pay for what you have actually downloaded.

And that's it - I hope you find Coinado useful!


FAQ

Q: Isn't torrenting via the Tor network discouraged?
A: The actual torrenting happens on the clearnet. Only the resulting files are transferred via the Tor network. And for each GB of data that Coinado transfers via Tor, it commits to contribute another 10 GB of bandwidth back to Tor. So arguably, the more you torrent via Coinado, the healthier the Tor network becomes. ;-)

Q: Why use Tor? Isn't it super slow?
A: Give it a try, you might be surprised! But yes, it is of course slower than a direct download. Depending on the size of the file, it might be fast enough to stream though, so you can already start watching something while it is still downloading. The upside is, that you get true privacy. Your VPN might also claim a "no log policy", but let's face it, if there ever is a crack down on filesharing via VPN, the popular ones will probably just be overtaken by law enforcement behind the scenes and operated by them for a while while they collect all the data they need. Coinado on the other hand is torrenting for the paranoid. ;-)