LOS ANGELES — With cryptocurrencies continuing their volatile ride, these awkward darlings of the adult entertainment payment world are facing new challenges, even as the industry renews its love affair with the promise of an easy-to-use anonymous payment system.
Although the benefits of anonymity are a key driver of the merger of crypto and porn, many merchants are increasingly eyeing digital currencies as an investment vehicle — hoping that today’s $30 paysite membership fee will be worth $300 tomorrow, due to highly hoped-for value increases; making the prospect appealing for website owners. This of course must be countered with the fact that prospective customers are also hoping their $30 crypto investment will reap big future dividends — and so they may be reluctant to part with their Bitcoin et al in exchange for porn.
While the promise of profits and anonymity has moved the ball forward, one major hinderance to cryptocurrency uptake by adult merchants is the “easy-to-use” part of the equation, where profound crypto confusion leaves merchants cocking their heads like questioning canines when “those in the know” opine how simple it is to “safely set up your own wallet and process transactions yourself.”
That’s nice, but bakers want to bake and porners want to make porn, not figure out homespun crypto. This is where intermediary service providers such as BitPay have stepped in to spackle over the cracks, holding merchants’ hands and providing the missing ingredients for making transaction processing and order fulfillment a seamless process. Indeed, BitPay was instrumental in raising industry awareness of crypto’s potential for adult, while fueling the efforts of early adopters — but BitPay’s place in porn seems to have ended.
Perhaps purposely listed as prohibited activity No. 10 (smartly signified with the Roman numeral “X” on BitPay’s recently updated Terms of Service), “Explicit sexual content” is no longer allowed on the payment processing platform, which once actively courted adult merchants — but unlike many other companies that make such a disclaimer and then turn a blind eye to this policy violation, BitPay now seems to be moving against industry operators using its service.
News of the action broke on Reddit’s r/Bitcoin, where Bacchus Entertainment’s sexy Saffron Bacchus revealed the claimed contents of an email from BitPay’s support team notifying her that she had two months to find a replacement service before her account was terminated due to her offering of sexually explicit content.
Kudos to the company for providing her with advanced notice (something that industry clients have not always received from billing companies departing this market space), but the action still leaves merchants scrambling for a ready replacement.
But should they bother?
While churn among billing providers is nothing new for the industry, the impact of crypto is — and perhaps more concerning than the departure of any one company from adult, is the range of commentary seen on r/Bitcoin in response to Saffron’s post. These ran the gamut from noting BitPay and other intermediaries were conceived as stopgap measures during crypto’s infancy, and are no longer needed (something Saffron and indeed the companies themselves, may debate); to comments questioning the very role of crypto as a porn payment choice and the value of waiting to get paid before allowing access to content.
For paysite owners and performers alike, whether you are interested in crypto or critical of it, reading through the dozens of thoughtful comments can provide useful insights to guide near- to mid-term business decisions.
Although BitPay’s departure from adult, like the departure of any company from the space, lessens the diversity of the industry’s service providers, the firm’s focus on the future of crypto processing can give some comfort to those who embrace this new measure of wealth as a viable option for paying for porn and beyond.
