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The world's cryptocurrency is now worth more than $1 trillion, with bitcoin accounting for a large majority of the value. The price of the oldest virtual currency has risen to almost $40,000, pushing the value of all bitcoins in circulation up to more than $700 billion.

Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is now worth more than $140 billion. Then there's a long list of less valuable cryptocurrencies, including Tether at $22 million, Litecoin at $11 million, and Bitcoin Cash at $8 billion.

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to own around 1 million bitcoins. Most of these were mined in the first two years of Bitcoin's existence when there was little competition. If he still has copies of the private keys that control these coins, that would give him a net worth of nearly $40 billion—enough to make him among the 40 wealthiest people on the planet. Nakamoto has never publicly revealed his true identity and has not communicated publicly since 2014.

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L'article Pourquoi le Bitcoin a-t-il atteint des sommets ces dernières semaines ? est apparu en premier sur Numerama .

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Update, 12/26/20 : It's the year end holiday season, and Ars staff has been enjoying some much needed downtime. While that happens, we're resurfacing some classic Ars stories like this 2017 explainer on everything you've wanted to know about Bitcoin but may have been afraid to ask. (Because with the cryptocurrency's value reaching a new record high not even two weeks ago , it's perfectly reasonable to want the basic intel.) This piece first published on December 15, 2017 and it appears unchanged below.

The soaring price of bitcoin—the virtual currency is now worth more than $250 billion—has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks. But the real significance of bitcoin isn't just its rising value. It's the technological breakthrough that allowed the network to exist in the first place.

Bitcoin's still anonymous inventor, who went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, figured out a completely new way for a decentralized network to reach a consensus about a shared transaction ledger. This innovation made possible the kind of fully decentralized electronic payment systems that cypherpunks had dreamed about for decades.

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The price of one bitcoin rose above $20,000 on Wednesday. The new all-time record caps a year of gains for the world's most valuable cryptocurrency. The value of all bitcoin in circulation is now around $380 billion.

No single event seems to have pushed bitcoin's value over the $20,000 mark. But more and more companies, institutions, and wealthy individuals have started to see it as a worthwhile long-term investment, driving demand upward.

A software company called MicroStrategy has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into bitcoin in recent months. It recently announced it was raising another $400 million to buy bitcoin.

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Back in 2016, police in New Zealand received information from the Inland Revenue Service in the United States that a movie piracy website was being operated by a local man.

According to the IRS, the man and his associates were using online international money transfer services to send remittances between the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Vietnam. What followed was a three-year investigation and a raid on the man in 2019.

Police Raid Alleged Movie Pirate’s Home, Seize Crypto Haul

In June 2019, police swooped on software programmer Jaron David McIvor, making two visits to his home in New Zealand. The then-31-year-old reportedly lived in a modest rental property with no obvious wealth or expensive assets such as luxury vehicles.

Several months later in November 2019, it was revealed that McIvor had cooperated with police, handing over the keys to access $6.2m in cryptocurrencies and NZ$6.2m (US$4.4m) and NZ$800,000 (US$568,320) in banked funds. The assets were seized under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act.

Later that month, police seized a further NZ472,000 (US$335,308) in cryptocurrency and NZ377,000 (US$267,820) in cash from a McIvor ‘associate’, later revealed to be his brother.

At the time, Detective Senior Sergeant Keith Kay, head of the Asset Recovery Unit in Waikato, said McIvor had helped to create a movie piracy site (which has still not been named) from which he received significant funds.

The site allegedly operated in the United States and when funds were deposited into various bank accounts via wire transfers, Stripe, and PayPal, a money-laundering investigation was launched. After “suspicious activity” was discovered on an account linked to McIvor, the raids and seizures took place.

Court Orders Seizure of Cash and Cryptocurrency

In a brief judgment handed down by the New Zealand High Court this morning, it is noted the McIvor was investigated for his role in the movie piracy scheme and as a result, significant funds would be forfeited to the state after he admitted profiting from copyright infringement.

According to the Court, the Commission of Police ultimately restrained funds in McIvor’s bank account totaling NZ$818,000 (US$581,066) and cryptocurrencies now worth an eye-watering NZ$21 million (US$14.9m). Additional funds “found their way” into his brother’s account too – almost NZ$386,000 (US$274,195) and cryptocurrency now worth NZ$1.77 million (US$1.25 million)

“The brothers recently agreed to forfeiture of all crypto-currencies and all but $400,000 (US$284,140). I approved their agreement with the Commissioner on 16 November 2020,” the judge wrote.

“I was satisfied this outcome was consistent with the purposes of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009, and the overall interests of justice. I reached this conclusion because the overwhelming majority of restrained funds were forfeited, and litigation over the balance (of $NZ400,000) would be disproportionately expensive and time consuming.

“In short, I considered settlement met the public interest,” he concluded.

Movie Piracy Site Still Not Named

The High Court judgment makes no mention of any further legal action against McIvor and mentions no ongoing investigations or court cases in respect of his copyright-infringing activities. Neither does it mention the name of the site, which seems a little unusual given the apparent scale of the operation.

However, there are some similarities with a case in the United States, also based in movie piracy and involving large volumes of cryptocurrency. Just a month before the crypto seizures in New Zealand, United States authorities confirmed that they had seized around US$4 million worth of cash and cryptocurrency as part of an investigation into alleged movie piracy.

That investigation ended last November with a guilty plea from Oregon resident Talon White and the forfeiture of $3.9 million seized from his bank accounts, $35,000 in cash, cryptocurrency worth around $424,000, plus his home in Oregon, then valued at $415,000. On top, White was ordered to pay $669,557 in restitution to the MPAA and $3,392,708 in restitution to the IRS.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Bitcoin rose above $18,000 on Tuesday evening, reaching its highest value since December 2017. Indeed, prior to this week bitcoin has only been worth more than $18,000 for a brief four-day period at the peak of the 2017 bitcoin boom: from December 16 to December 19.

After reaching a high around $19,500 in December 2017, the currency's value fell to $6,000 in February 2018, then to $3,200 in December. Since then, its value has risen in fits and starts, rising above $18,000 late on Tuesday.

Bitcoin's value fell a bit in Wednesday morning trading. As I write this, one bitcoin is worth around $17,800.

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The price of one bitcoin rose above $14,000 on Saturday morning. It was the first time the virtual currency reached that level since January 2018. As I write this, the currency is trading for around $13,800.

Bitcoin, a currency whose name has become synonymous with price volatility, has seen three major bull runs in the past. Bitcoin's price peaked around $30 in June 2011, around $1,100 in January 2014, and just below $20,000 in December 2017. Each peak was followed by a wrenching crash where the currency lost more than 80 percent of its value.

After the last bubble peaked in December 2017, the price steadily deflated until it reached a low around $3,200 in late 2018. It reached a peak around $13,800 in mid-2019, fell to $4,000 in early 2020, and has now soared back to $14,000. Bitcoin fans are hoping for another boom that pushes the currency past the highs of 2017, but that's far from a sure thing.

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The Internal Revenue Service is considering adding a question to Form 1040—America's primary income tax form—asking tax filers if they dealt in virtual currency in 2020. It would be the agency's latest attempt to crack down on underreporting of cryptocurrency profits.

If an American buys bitcoin, ether, or another cryptocurrency and then sells it later at a profit, she or he will typically owe capital gains tax on the difference. But blockchains do not have the tax reporting infrastructure that has become standard for conventional financial institutions. So the IRS doesn't have an easy way to figure out who has received a cryptocurrency windfall. In the early years of the bitcoin boom, many taxpayers failed to report large bitcoin-related profits.

In recent years, the IRS has increased pressure on cryptocurrency traders to comply with tax laws. A 2014 bulletin laid out the basic rules for paying taxes on virtual currency price gains. In 2016, the IRS sought transaction data about thousands of users of Coinbase, a popular US-based cryptocurrency exchange. Coinbase complied with the request in 2018 after some legal wrangling.

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The Pirate Bay has been both an early adopter and a pioneer when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

More than seven years ago the torrent site added support for Bitcoin donations , with Litecoin and Monero following later.

The Pirate Bay was also the first large website to start mining cryptocurrency by using the computing resources of is visitors. This was a controversial move, but one that was followed by many other sites .

Bitcoin Scared Copyright Holders

The fact that cryptocurrency transactions don’t involve any banks or other authorities was a scary thought for rightsholders. Early on, the music industry’s anti-piracy group RIAA alerted the US Government to this emerging threat.

“In April 2013, the site started accepting donations from the public by Bitcoin, a digital currency, which operates using peer-to-peer technology,” the RIAA informed the US Government.

“There are no central authority or banks involved which makes it very difficult to seize or trace Bitcoin funds. In May 2013, the site also started accepting Litecoin, another peer-to-peer based internet currency.”

The RIAA was right to state that Bitcoin does indeed make it harder to seize funds. That said, tracing Pirate Bay donations isn’t all that hard. In fact, all transactions are transparent and visible to the public at large, allowing anyone to see how much ‘money’ users are tipping the site.

Bitcoin Donations as Lunch Money, and More

Late April, when The Pirate Bay came back after over a month of downtime, it started using a new Bitcoin address so we decided to take another look at this revenue stream. As we’ve signaled in the past , cryptocurrency donations alone certainly can’t keep the site afloat.

The first transaction to the new Bitcoin address , a sizeable 0.007 BTC, came in late April. Since then, 23 donations followed, totaling 0.042 BTC. That equates to roughly $450 the current exchange rate.

This is less than $5 per day. Even if we added the Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash donations, which are much lower, the $5 barrier would not be reached.

In other words, Bitcoin donations are not the threat copyright holders envisioned early on. As we have shown earlier, it’s still nothing more than lunch money. Apparently, millions of Pirate Bay users are not that generous.

Still, TPB does outperform the competition when it comes to donations. For example, 1337x, which also prominently lists a Bitcoin address on its site, earned roughly $0.50 per day over the past several months.

That said, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may still be instrumental in keeping pirate sites afloat. Donations aside, they allow site owners to pay for servers and hardware relatively anonymously. This makes it possible to counter the follow-the-money approach many anti-piracy groups use.

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^{Fetured image: Steve Garfield ( cc 2.0 )}

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.