How Porn Boosts Cryptocurrencies
Pornhub is by far the largest adult website in the world. According to similarweb.com page ratings, the adult site is the 10th most trafficked site on the web and the company claimed to have 42 billion visits last year. Estimates say that 11,082 hours of video is watched per minute on Pornhub, and ever since the Covid-19 lockdowns traffic has skyrocketed.
After a New York Times column accused the website of distributing videos depicting child abuse and non-consensual violence, Visa and Mastercard immediately ended their cooperation with Pornhub. As a result, the website can no longer offer credit card payments for the paid premium content.
“Unfortunately, we are unable to accept credit cards at this moment” — Pornhub premium shop
The blocking of credit card payments has hit porn site Pornhub and its Canadian owner Mindgeek hard. Pornhub itself also reacted to the accusations and deleted around nine million porn videos. It is still not clear if Visa and Mastercard will lift the blockade. As a reaction, Pornhub has announced a series of actions to clean up the site including moderation, banning downloads, and verifying creators.
Since PayPal has also announced to stop the collaboration with the adult site in 2019, crypto-currencies are the only option remaining.
Pornhub is using the payment processor Probiller and the service supports bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), dash (DASH), ethereum (ETH), ethereum classic (ETC), litecoin (LTC), monero (XMR), nem (XEM), tether (USDT), tron (TRX), verge (XVG), waves (WAVES), and zcash (ZEC).
Crypto Payments Since 2018
This is not Mindgeek’s first attempt to process payments with cryptocurrencies. In April 2018, i.e. after the first big crypto hype, Pornhub already started to offer Verge (XVG) as a means of payment. Later, Tron (TRX) followed, and in September 2020, Bitcoin and Litecoin (LTC) were added. Now the portfolio is being expanded to 13 different assets. However, nothing is known about the use and popularity of crypto-payments.
Boosting Cryptocurrencies
Users that used to pay for their membership with a credit card will be forced to switch to cryptocurrencies or cancel their membership. We will see how hard this change will hit Pornhub.
On Reddit, many users were positive about the fact that Pornhub will only offer cryptocurrencies as a means of payment in the future. They assume that Pornhub, with its 42 billion views per year, will attract many “normal people” to the world of cryptocurrencies, who will then also invest in these currencies.
Pornhub is such a massive website. This is going to bring so many normies into cryptocurrency who don’t care or want to invest in it. They just need an uncensorable payment method. — Reddit user
A Good Fit?
Even if the decision has been forced by the partners, this use-case of cryptocurrencies seems like a good fit. Being uncensorable, decentralized, and anonymous, users of adult sites could even benefit from this change.
Likewise, the crypto acceptance of Pornhub once again puts Bitcoin and Co. in a bad light. Not only is there the legal aspect of the accusations, but also the moral problem, which is not necessarily good marketing for cryptocurrencies.
On a personal level, it doesn’t feel like a victory when a platform successfully circumvents business restrictions because it has a problem with child abuse. In this case, the often invoked neutrality of technology creates a dilemma.
If you are interested in some other use-cases of cryptocurrencies, have a look at Is The Blockchain Ready? and Is There Still Some Potential Left in Cryptocurrencies?
