Looking to expand their general reach and user base, cryptocurrencies have decided to take on the new, barely crypto-explored market of pornography. The latest confirmation by Pornhub, one of the world’s most popular adult entertainment websites, that they will be accepting Tron (TRX) and ZenCash (ZEN) payments, is just one in a forming line of similar deals that have been gracing the space for a while now. The deal comes shortly after Verge, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency known for being a clone of Dogecoin (a pretty bad one at that) confirmed its own identical partnership with the mentioned adult website.
Pornhub seems to be the connecting factor here. The company, even though built around content that is rarely associated with smart decisions, has built a reputation as one of the best run adult entertainment enterprises out there. While their dealings with Verge, TRX and ZEN have been marketed as revolutionary, they certainly aren’t the first ones of the kind in the industry. Naughty America adopted Bitcoin payments in 2014. Playboy Plus also gives its users an ability to purchase premium content with BitPay. Brazzers, Porn.com, LiveCams etc are just some of these adult focused platforms that have accepted crypto payments in the past.
One wonders why are these partnerships popping up more and more as of late. With Verge, there is a clear connection to be made: XVG is a privacy token and someone who purchases pornography probably wants to have their transaction data preserved. Corey Price, the vice president of the Pornhub company, had a few words on the matter:
“Decentralized payment systems have continued to grow in popularity, and cryptocurrency adoption is exploding across a broad economic spectrum. Today, cryptocurrencies are especially viable in the adult entertainment industry because they are privacy-centric and incorporate more anonymity tools than traditional tender.”
This can explain why Pornhub didn’t go after more established coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. However, Verge is far from being a functional privacy coin. With numerous 51% attacks trashing its network, shady dealings and practices from the devs and a general sense of inadequacy surrounding the project, Monero or 0x seem like they would have been better options. Therefore, the original question still remains unanswered.
That is, until we realize that the privacy perhaps wasn’t the main motive behind this partnership. If you recall, Verge called upon its “Vergefam” to contribute 75 million XVG tokens to fund the project development and partnerships. People noticed that, just days before the Pornhub deal was announced, a large amount of XVG was moved from the donation account, which fueled speculation that Pornhub was paid off to make this deal with Verge. For now, with no apparent qualities that partnership with XVG could offer, this remains the main conspiracy theory why Pornhub started using the coin as a payment option.
The theory expands onto Tron as well. The project has nothing to do with privacy and is known for engaging in “pay to play” practices. Justin Sun, the main man behind Tron, recently boasted about TRX making it onto NASDAQ. This did indeed happen but not in the way you might initially presume. Instead of TRX becoming the first major cryptocurrency to become listed on this major stock market, Justin Sun simply paid an ad for Tron to appear on the massive LCD advertising panel located on the NASDAQ building. With that in mind, it isn’t far-fetched to presume that he got in contact with Pornhub and paid them off a decent sum of money, simply to have them accept his currency as their on-platform means of payment.
Ultimately, there isn’t THAT much wrong with these practices. Paid partnerships and promotions are a part and parcel of any business activity. It is however somewhat disingenuous to not disclose the true nature of the partnership and pretend how it happened naturally, especially when there is no clear justification why it would. The partnerships will remain active and more similar ones will be coming for sure, giving both sides increased exposure, user base and profits. The morality and ethics of such dealings should probably be left unquestioned, especially when you consider the type of industry that is being dealed with.
