LISTEN: How Crypto and Porn Go Hand in Hand

In this audio interview, CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen and SpankChain community manager Allie Eve Knox talk about the conjunction of porn and crypto. From performers who accept BTC and XRP to decentralized delivery services, Cuen and Knox explore what happens when financial companies meet censorship-resistant systems.

The biggest problem? Knox and other performers and sex workers face semi-secret discrimination from payment platforms. She recalls being shut out of PayPal early on.

“I think it’s a morality thing. I know when I got shut down on PayPal in 2014 they were like, ‘Hey, you’re violating our terms of service.’ And I remember writing them back and being like, ‘Exactly what am I doing?’ I was selling socks. I was taking pictures. How is this a thing? They were just like, ‘You know, we don’t really like this, so we’re not gonna let you do it.'”

The biggest issue, says Knox, is chargebacks. By creating a completely transparent and safe system for potentially untoward activities, big financial companies no longer get to pretend to be moral. Further, it helps the performers actually make a living.

“One performer told me, for example, that when she was trying to get cashed out in crypto from a platform that accepts crypto, they delayed her payment for months. And so the volatility, in the meantime, just really killed her earnings,” she said.