Blockchain and Porn
The current state of affair
At the time of writing of this article, there were times when staying at home meant saving the world. Many industries were put on hold in those times of pandemic, but the pornographic industry ain’t one of them.
It’s widely known that words as “porn” and “sex” are among the most searched ones in Google and it’s completely understandable why most of us (or all of us) have come across such content. It even seems like now porn is more difficult to avoid than to find.
Numbers
Let’s talk in numbers. According to a recent article by Forbes outlining how much of the internet is porn, for the year of 2010, out of the top 1 million web sites, 42 227 were ‘sex-related’. That occupies only 4% of the internet space. This number may at first look underwhelming, but this does not include the content itself in those sites and the overall traffic they accumulate.
More numbers
For example, in 2016 PornHub had 23 billion visits, which make around 64 million people a day viewing just one mainstream website.
In terms of content watched, and this is truly astounding, 5246 centuries worth of footage was viewed in just one year.
Data gathered by SimilarWeb showing the monthly traffic back in June 2019 allows us to see that 3.36 billion people have searched for and visited pornhub.com; 2.26 billion have visited Amazon.com and 1.81 billion — Netflix.com
That many searches for this term make the porn industry one of the most profitable in the world. Just a fact.
We all know it … its driving technological advancements
Since the adult entertainment industry is considered often technologically savvy, it should be no surprise that they know there’s a huge market out there for the latest and greatest tech — blockchain.
Blockchain technology is the solution for the most apprehensive porn industry’s issues regarding privacy and reputation among its clients.
The relation between blockchain and porn
One of the most important features that blockchain can offer is the possibility for online porn users to pay for services and content. Purchasing those via a blockchain network (if used correctly) means that they can leave no trace of their true identity nor let it be revealed.
This allows Premium accounts and content to be paid without your wife, who you share your bank account with, knowing. This creates a natural synergy between the cryptocurrency and porn industry with a semi-anonymous (say pseudonymous) financial system.
One of the world’s leading adult entertainment websites such as PornHub is one of the platforms allowing usage of cryptocurrency as a method of payment within the website.
Rewarding and tipping creators
Another great fit of blockchain and the porn industry is the ability to stimulate and reward the content creators, curators, or even porn viewers directly using different fungible or non-fungible blockchain-based tokens or coins. Among one of the most used cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, TRON, Monero, and Zcash, but such platforms have the chance to develop their own blockchain-based utility token used only to be utilized in their platform.
Users have the chance to send token tips to online porn actors and also in order to gain more popularity, porn sites can send its users tokens for encouraging them to watch and to tip through their streaming platforms.
This can also be achieved in a true peer to peer way without any intermediary cutting the cost for the middlemen (in the face of the platform used).
The problem
Unfortunately, as every new technology blockchain has its flaws. One key feature is that information added to such a network cannot be changed without significant effort. In other words, personally identifiable information, full images and/or video clips can be added to the blockchain without the possibility to ever be removed. Which is making blockchain the perfect weapon for blackmailing.
Conclusion
Аlthough blockchain is a relatively young technology, it has certainly won respect among world-leading industries such as the porn industry where cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on a decentralized public ledger, making it challenging to track a person’s pornography habits.
The increasing interest in cryptocurrencies being used in the adult entertainment industry is a signal that cryptos are here to stay. But even though blockchain helps solving a lot of the major problems, one should always remember — once on the blockchain, always on the blockchain.
