What do cannabis entrepreneurs and adult entertainers have in common with the World Food Program?
While many have gained exposure to cryptocurrency by watching the prices of cryptocurrencies in their own — or maybe a friend’s — portfolio fluctuate wildly, it’s likely the real use cases of these cryptocurrencies that will bring blockchain technology to the mainstream.
And it looks like sex and drugs might take the lead.
Several blockchain endeavors that have the most incentive and even traction to bring real applications of blockchain technology to the mainstream come from these industries traditionally discriminated by legacy financial institutions.
As pointed out by Andrew Keys of Consensys in a Medium post, early consumer-facing websites in the 90’s catered to gambling, pornography, and gaming.
Today, upstarts centered in these same industries, like Spankchain, Fun Fair, and Virtue Poke, are creating consumer facing applications on the Ethereum blockchain. Earlier this month, a startup called Glance Technologies Inc. announced a deal to license its mobile-payment product to another company, Cannabis Big Data Holdings Inc., which will use blockchain-based technology to distribute massage oils, soaps, and lip balm to cannabis dispensaries, according to Bloomberg.
“We’ve found an effective way of combining blockchain with big data and cannabis,” Rob Anson, Cannabis Big Holdings’ Chief Executive Officer, said.
It’s not just startups getting in the game. IBM, with its bid for blockchain tech to help Canada regulate its cannabis industry, could contribute to more illicit products leading broader adoption of blockchain technology.
There’s a market for all of these services across these industries because businesses in these spaces still struggle to access services via traditional financial institutions.
Even in states where cannabis has been legalized, it remains a banned substance federally. This means merchants cannot use any credit card rails or otherwise use traditional financial institutions to make transactions.
So merchants do deals in cash, with logistics and security concerns pushing some to transact in bitcoin.
As for pornography, legacy financial institutions have likely wanted to avoid the social implication of servicing the industry. Currently, SpankChain, claims this leaves people working in adult entertainment reliant on middlemen who charge “exorbitant fees due to a lack of competition in the space”.
With anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of their earnings at stake, SpankChain, a blockchain-based application allowing adult entertainers to create and distribute content on their own streaming site, has found a community with incentive to promote the platform themselves.
This incentive to avoid high fees transcends beyond discriminated industries. The World Food Program, which is free to bank with traditional financial institution, used the Ethereum network to distribute 1.4 million food vouchers to 10,500 Syrian refugees in Jordan.
The largest benefit of using blockchain, according to Quartz, has been the World Food Program seeing a significant drop in payments made to the usual middlemen: financial service firms.
Maybe, like the World Food Program, cannabis entrepreneurs and adult entertainers will soon be able to stretch their dollars a little further with the adoption of blockchain technology, too.
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