Major News Site Salon Asking Readers to Mine Monero Instead of Ads

Salon.com is giving readers who don’t want to view ads a choice to mine Monero in their browser.

If you have an ad-blocker enabled, Salon now displays a pop-up message asking you to either enable ads, or keep ads blocked by allowing the site to use your computing power to mine Monero. All of the Monero that is generated goes to Salon to help their bottom line.

Salon has updated their FAQ to address exactly how it works, and says it will only mine Monero while you are on the site. When you close Salon.com in your browser, the process stops.

“For our beta program, we’ll start by applying your processing power to mine cryptocurrencies to recoup lost ad revenue when you use an ad blocker. We plan to further use any learnings from this to help support the evolution and growth of blockchain technology, digital currencies and other ways to better service the value exchange between content and user contribution.

Your unused processing power are the resources you already have but are not actively using to it’s full potential at the time of browsing salon.com. Mining uses more of your resources which means your computer works a bit harder and uses more electricity than if you were just passively browsing the site with ads.”

In the future, the company says it is looking into mining other cryptocurrencies in addition to Monero.

The move marks another big step forward on the path toward mainstream adoption of virtual currencies. Salon.com is one of the biggest sites in the world, and currently ranks at #977 among all sites in America, according to Alexa.