LOS ANGELES — Allie Eve Knox, the adult performer and cryptocurrency advocate who has been one of the industry’s leading “early-adopters” of blockchain-based technology, announced on Saturday the creation of her first NFT (Non-Fungible Token).
NFTs are one-of-a-kind collectible digital assets around which a thriving investment market has quickly developed.
Although NFTs have been a known concept in cryptocurrency circles for some time, the market has recently crossed over into the mainstream, resulting in a rushed flurry of explainer articles and news of high-price trades.
Recently, NFTs have been highlighted by billionaire entrepreneur and tech influencer Elon Musk, his partner the musician Grimes — who recently issued an enormously profitable series of art NFTs — and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who spun his first tweet (and the first tweet ever) as a tradable NFT.
On Saturday, Allie Eve Knox tweeted “Hi, go bid on my first NFT!,” a piece of digital art titled “Giantess Allie in the City” which depicts her in the nude looming over a cityscape.
Knox’s NFT is now open for bids at NFT marketplace OpenSea.
NFTs seem like ideal assets for adult performers: although they could literally be anything non-fungible (one-of-a-kind), the art market has already started getting involved because the asset appears to be best marketed around digital images.
Pornography, a largely visual medium, could be the ideal counterpart to market the highly technical FinTech and blockchain-based concepts underlying NFTs.
XBIZ has learned of a number of would-be NFT creators trying to book photo shoots with models hoping to create X-rated and erotic tokens. Some of these creators are proposing paying the models in cryptocurrency or else offering “shares” of the resulting NFT itself.
According to Knox, fellow crypto-friendly model Brenna Sparks is also creating NFTs.
Porn and NFTs, a Match Made in the Blockchain
“I minted a token, and people can bid on it,” Knox told XBIZ about this novel way to generate income for adult performers. “There will also be residuals and royalties. If I sell it to someone, they can turn around and flip it. If they were to sell it again, I can make a 30% residual, which is a number I chose and is there on the algorithm forever. Every time that sells — and it could be any price, because it’s tied to Ethereum (ETH) fluctuations — I can get a residual or royalty from it.”
“And this would be great for adult performers, because, as everyone knows, porn doesn’t generally have residuals: you get paid for the scene and that’s it,” she added.
“Those residuals are automatically built into the algorithm,” she stressed. “It’s all on the blockchain. You can see everything.”
Like all crypto advocates, Knox also emphasized the anti-censorship advantages of the blockchain environment.
“If [NFT marketplaces] Rarible or OpenSea were to go down, or they decide they’re not going to allow adult, the content doesn’t disappear,” she explained. “It’s minted on the blockchain. If someone were to take down your Instagram, on the other hand, your images would be gone.”
Another Way to Create Content
Knox says that due to her involvement with the crypto community, she has known about NFTs “for a long time.”
“I just did it recently because it just became mainstream,” she said. “If it sells or not, it was a fun project. But it’s another way to create content and the potential is big.”
Knox said the potential justifies the small initial cost attached to creating the artwork and putting it up for sale or auction.
“You have to pay to mint,” she said. “I’m $50 dollars [into] ETH fees, plus I paid for the artwork to be created.”
But the potential for residuals and also boffo profits success stories like the Grimes art sale, which allegedly netted the singer $6 million, make NFTs an attractive proposition for adult performers.
“Also, don’t forget the blockchain is censorless,” Knox said. “And we in adult should like that.”