Currently, Pornhub is accepting cryptocurrency solely for its premium service. Visa and Mastercard both pulled off support for payments on Pornhub a while back; hence the adult website has to depend on cryptocurrency for payments.
The network is heavily dependent on advertising revenue, but this change in payment will not impact it.
Why Companies Cut Off Ties With Pornhub
A New York Times article made a report that the website was allowing videos of women being assaulted and minors having sex to be uploaded. After its publication, the big credit card companies cut off payment ties with the porn network due to the scandal.
According to a report, Visa and Mastercard’s decision to not support payments on Pornhub is the latest and the most impactful instance of a payment processor blocking funds to the site and its performers. Paypal started it all in 2019 when it started blocking Pornhub participants in November.
After Paypal, it turned to cryptocurrencies. It began accepting Tron, Verge and Tether payments. Currently, Pornhub also accepts Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Monero, NEM, Tether, Tron, ZCash and Waves (all different forms of cryptocurrency).
Pornhub’s site has now made specifications that it will only accept crypto. With the coronavirus pandemic, the adult website has seen a massive increase in traffic with over 3.6 billion users reported in August this year.
Who Will Really Suffer?
Pornhub has, however, not officially reacted to this change in payment status. Allie Eve Knox, an adult performer and cryptocurrency veteran, said that it is unfortunate that Visa and Mastercard are choosing legal games to hold the network accountable. Knox added that it is no secret that the website was operating in dubious ways. Performers have been saying for quite some time now that Pornhub needs to be accountable for its actions and follow the law to the letter.
She added that Visa and MasterCard decisions affect the content creators more than Pornhub itself. If performers are not able to take Visa and Mastercard, they are not making money, and that is problematic because a lot of these performers use the platform as their main source of income.
As a follow-up to the NYT report, Pornhub has started a series of new things aimed at cleaning up the site. Some of them include expanded moderation, banning downloads and also allowing only verified content creators to upload videos.
Pornhub has also said that it’s mainly a target because of its nature, being a porn site. The company said Facebook alone reported 84 million cases of child sexual abuse. At the same time, the independent third-party Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 Pornhub incidents.
