Kim Dotcom's Mega to accept Bitcoins

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 18 Feb 2013 at 16:33

Kim Dotcom's Mega now accepts the Bitcoin virtual currency as payment for storage upgrades on the file-sharing site.

The new site from Kim Dotcom already offers users 50GB of storage for free, but those wanting more have to upgrade. Now, they can do that via the virtual currency Bitcoin, giving users an alternative to PayPal.

According to the BBC, the current rate for a Bitcoin is about £17, allowing a single coin to buy two months of Mega's cheapest storage package.

After Dotcom's last site Megaupload was shut down after a police raid, his own arrest and an FBI extradition attempt, Mega launched with the promise of being legally sound and secure. Kim Dotcom has suggested the site already has three million users.

Files are encrypted, for example, meaning Mega can't see what's being uploaded. The use of Bitcoins is another step in the same direction – although the virtual currency doesn't necessarily offer perfect anonymity, it at least isn't going through American corporations such as credit card firms.

Bitcoin haven

Buying additional storage for Mega with Bitcoins can be done via a reseller site called BitVoucher, Dotcom said over Twitter.

"BitVoucher was created so that users of Mega could use Bitcoins to purchase quick and secure upgrades without revealing their identity to anyone other than Mega," the site says.

"The Bitcoin payment system allows its users to make payments without revealing their identities or other personal information, unlike credit cards, Paypal and similar systems," the site adds. "Both BitVoucher and our payment processor, Zip-Bit, believe that an excess of customer information is already collected through existing channels, and we like to consider ourselves a haven from the intrusive nature of most payment processors."

Mega is the latest web firm to start accepting Bitcoins. Last week, Reddit announced it would accept the currency for its Gold membership, while a US start-up is taking bitcoins as payment for pizza.