[ANN] Coinado - download a torrent anonymously and stream it via the Tor network

[coinado]

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:

Code:

> coinado 0E876CE2A1A504F849CA72A5E2BC07347B3BC957

Connecting to coinado7d6tauhlz.onion (coinado7d6tauhlz.onion)|127.0.69.0|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 332243668 (317M) [video/x-msvideo]
Saving to: `big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi'

53% [=============>              ] 176,127,552  311K/s  eta 8m 25s

> mplayer big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi

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

Code:

> torify wget -O bigbuckbunny.avi http://coinado7d6tauhlz.onion/i/0E876CE2A1A504F849CA72A5E2BC07347B3BC95/auto?u=iv1w09gf1np8kluxp3e860sve7hdyhu9

Connecting to coinado7d6tauhlz.onion (coinado7d6tauhlz.onion)|127.0.69.0|:80... connected.
[...]

> mplayer bigbuckbunny.avi

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:

Code:

> sudo aptitude install tor

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

Code:

> torify wget http://coinado7d6tauhlz.onion/setup/coinado

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:

Code:

> less coinado
> chmod a+x coinado

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

Code:

> ./coinado balance

[... ascii qr code omitted ...]

Bitcoin address: 189hd6vJNiVNwtMxNn1Rj9ZHKaYPoWPJwM
Balance: 0 B

Send bitcoins to your address to top up your account.
Pricing: 423 bits per GiB (~ $0.10 per GiB)

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:

Code:

> ./coinado 0E876CE2A1A504F849CA72A5E2BC07347B3BC957

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:

Code:

> ./coinado <info hash here> 03x14

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. ;-)

[coinado]

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":

Code:

torify wget --content-disposition http://coinado7d6tauhlz.onion/i/0E876CE2A1A504F849CA72A5E2BC07347B3BC957/auto

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!

[boopy265420]

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":

Code:

torify wget --content-disposition http://coinado7d6tauhlz.onion/i/0E876CE2A1A504F849CA72A5E2BC07347B3BC957/auto

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!

That is awesome news and good decision to make it free of cost at start. This will help people to test the service as well as promote it. I would give it a try if works well surely will subscribe for paid service.

[SteamGamesBTC.com]

I'm going to give it a try. Thanks and good luck! :-)

[SirLolicon]

seems nice.. ima test it out once just to see how it goes.. not that expensive anyways

[harrymmmm]

I like this!

My ubuntu wget doesn't use '-c' by default tho, so when a coinado script fails half way thru, rerunning it starts a whole new download. I tried using -c in a modified script and it continued the existing partial download, so I suggest adding it into your coinado script (even if it needs to be as a 'continue' option to the script invocation).

[coinado]

My ubuntu wget doesn't use '-c' by default tho, so when a coinado script fails half way thru, rerunning it starts a whole new download. I tried using -c in a modified script and it continued the existing partial download, so I suggest adding it into your coinado script (even if it needs to be as a 'continue' option to the script invocation).

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

[coinado]

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!

[nahtnam]

Hey!

Just used your site in a hackathon, and won 1st place!

Thanks!

[harrymmmm]

Has something happened to this service?
I notice that coinado.io has been down for (at least) a few days now.
Please tell me it's just moved to another site or something. You owe me about $1.50 dammit!