January 2019: End of Month round-up
If January was only foreplay, the rest of 2019 is looking nothing short of orgasmic for intimate.io. We won a major industry award, presented at events all over the world and — most excitingly — soft launched our crypto payment gateway and processed our very first consumer transactions.
The following is a round-up of all our activities for January 2019… We also post news on Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list too — you can do that at our website.
US ROADSHOW
Alex and Leah have just wrapped up a whirlwind couple of weeks at the US adult shows, attending XBIZ and the Cybersocket Web Awards in Los Angeles, before InterNEXT and AVN in Las Vegas.
January is always a big month for adult with a series of major award ceremonies to celebrate outstanding achievement from performers, executives and entrepreneurs alike.
Nominated for a total seven major industry awards (see details here), intimate.io was humbled to win the title ‘Best New Company — Industry Choice’ at the 19th Annual Cybersocket Web Awards in Los Angeles.
Read more about the Cybersocket Web Awards and their significance to the LGBTIQ+ community here.
At XBIZ, Leah spoke on a panel alongside Ameen Soleimani from SpankChain, about the future of crypto + adult. Leah and Ameen told the audience they were ‘on the same team’ working to drive consumer adoption and solve the systemic issues facing adult. Stuart Duncan of Vice Token was also invited to participate in the discussion, but unfortunately, he did not show.
At the Meet Market and beyond, everyone LOVED our new swag designs! Award-winning German porn star Texas Patti posted a few incredible fashion shoots for her millions of Followers on Instagram and Twitter, sporting our crop top — and not much else! You can see a couple of her photos below, but you’ll need to follow her on Twitter if you want to see the X-rated pics.
ASIA ACTIVITIES
Meanwhile, in Singapore, Reuben represented the crypto communities at the Binance Blockchain Fair. He said the conference had a somewhat subdued air as discussions around the duration and depth of the crypto winter continued. But with only several hundred attendees, it made it much easier to connect with major players in the space. It was also great catching up with supporters of intimate.io and discussing the next stage of our growth.
Back in Angeles City, we finally moved into our new office at SM Clark, much to the joy of everyone on the Pinoy team. We’ve already had some visitors come check out the new digs, including one of our partners, Chris Gadsby from Urban Resorts Japan. Gadsby is now making regular trips to Clark as his company is pursuing investment and development in the Philippines.
We also welcomed Chris Were, the founder of Mozzler, a bespoke software development company and technology incubator with clients across Australia. He was visiting Clark to induct his very first staff hire with Cloudstaff, the same business process outsourcing company that intimate.io works with. Read more about Cloudstaff here.
Chris Gadsby and Chris Were are both ITM token holders, so their visits are extra special as we love being able to share our progress with the community.
PRODUCT RELEASE — SOFT LAUNCH — CRYPTO PAYMENT GATEWAY
In collaboration with our partners, Smile Makers, we have deployed our first product: a microsite especially to handle crypto transactions in ITM and ETH.
If you’d like to test the checkout yourself — and be within the first cohort of people in the world to use it — just head over to:
https://www.cryptosmiles.store/
Smile Makers are a brand of pleasure massagers for women with a mission to normalise female sexuality. With Valentines Day coming up, their vibrators would make the perfect gift for a partner… Or a self-loving treat for you!
We soft launched the intimate.io crypto payment gateway and processed our very first consumer transactions in Seattle on 31st January 2019, with Leah delivering the keynote at the year’s first local Women in Blockchain event (event details here). We converted 10% of attendees, all our customers were female and half of them used crypto to complete their purchase.
The soft launch campaign will continue for eight weeks before we integrate directly with the Smile Makers main website. We’ll also be adding more crypto options to the checkout (including BTC and other ERC-20 tokens) and we’ll begin rolling-out integrations to additional merchant websites. You can view all our existing partners and merchants here.
Massive kudos to Nathan and the Pinoy team who demonstrated exceptional dedication and worked around the clock to ensure we met the deadline for our soft launch in Seattle.
If you’d like to test the checkout yourself — and be within the first cohort of people in the world to use it — just head over to: https://www.cryptosmiles.store/
IN THE MEDIA
Jessica Klein from Breaker Mag wrote an excellent review of the crypto panel at XBIZ featuring intimate.io and SpankChain. We felt especially proud of this positive coverage as Jessica is a journalist of strong integrity who is watching this space closely. Read it here.
Reuben spoke to Micky.com.au to break news of the intimate.io crypto payment gateway soft launch. The article is currently trending on Reddit, and at time of writing, we had 647 upvotes and 203 comments. Read it here.
Leah was interviewed by The Age to discuss the lack of traditional investment into the burgeoning SexTech and FemTech industries, and the opportunities being missed by Aussie VC as a result. Read it here.
UP NEXT
We have a series of speaking spots at prominent events and industry meet ups across the US and Australia over the next few weeks.
Pause Fest: The Future is Intimate
6–8 February 2019. Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia.
Leah will deliver a keynote titled The Future of Trust on the Global Stage at Pause Fest, 3:30–4pm on Wednesday 6th February. Purchase tickets here.
Pause Fest (Official Side Event): The Future of Bitcoin
6–8:30pm, 7 February 2019. Stone & Chalk, Melbourne, Australia.
It’s the 10th year anniversary of Bitcoin and the technology behind it continues to evolve. In partnership with coworking.fyi and the Blockchain Centre we will hear about the future of Bitcoin from:
- Jimmy Nguyen, Founding President, bComm Association and CEO, nChain representing Bitcoin SV
- Lucas Cullen, Co-Founder, CTO, Civic Ledger
- Kee Jefferys, Tech Lead, Loki
- Leah Callon-Butler, co-founder of intimate.io
- Moderated by Taylor Tran co-founder of coworking.fyi and the Crypto Coast Convention #CCCnoosa
Get tickets here. Our CTO Pat Roberts will also be in attendance at this event.
Blockchain Professionals Sydney: Blockchain Trends 2019
6–8:30pm, 12 February 2019. Tank Stream Labs, Sydney, Australia.
- Brenda Saveluc, Black Gold Legal
- George Samman, Sammantics
- Leah Callon-Butler, intimate.io
- Luke Anderson, Sigma Prime
- Mike Bacina, Piper Alderman (moderator)
Get tickets here. We will have Smile Makers available for purchase with ITM and ETH at this event, just in time for Valentines Day!
GET IN TOUCH
Leah and Nathan will be in Melbourne 5–8 February and Sydney 12–18 February. During this time, Reuben will be in the Philippines and Alex will be in Toronto, Canada. We are all available for meetings, speaking engagements, media interviews and partner discussions.
if you’d like to connect with any one of us, please email Carmela@intimate.io or flick us a message on Twitter or Telegram.
