Pornhub is one of the most visited adult sites in the world. According to Similar Web, Pornhub had about 3.31 billion visitors as of November – and is the 9th most visited website globally. However, the website’s business model was seriously violated by payment intermediaries Mastercard and Visa as they halted commercial services.
Pornhub recently added support for payments in BNB, DOGE, USDC, and XRP for on-site transactions.
NYT Report Caused Withdrawal of Giant Payment Processors
The payments giant took the move after the New York Times reported that the website had made money from child rape, vengeful pornography, spy videos of women being buried, racist and misogynistic content, and footage of women strangled in plastic material.
The article, entitled “The Children of Pornhub”, was written by opinion columnist Nicholas Christoph and directly identified the world’s largest credit card as a party to the exploitation. “Call me clever,” she said, “but I don’t understand why a search engine, bank, or credit card company should support a company that makes money from sexual assault on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can stop working with Pornhub, American Express, Mastercard and Visa can be terminated.”
The company responded swiftly to Christoph’s criticism and decided to follow PayPal’s move in November 2019 to discontinue its service to Pornhub. This payment act serves a warning to other platforms like OnlyFans, whose content is dominated by adult videos.
In a blog post, the company claims that it is misfocused due to producing pornography. The service wrote that it is clear that it’s being targeted not because of its guidelines and comparisons with its peers but also because it is an adult content platform. It is the same force that vilified Playboy, the National Arts Foundation, Sex Education, LGBTQ Rights, Women’s Rights, and even the American Library Association for 50 years.
Pornhub Adds Dogecoin, Expands Crypto Options
Pornhub now accepts payments on BNB, DOGE, USDC, and XRP. Changpeng Zhao, the leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, welcomed the move to add the BNB token to the pornhub platform.
In terms of technical innovation, the porn industry has often been at the forefront of introducing new marketing channels, as has its approach to payment technology. While most of the content is available for free, access to premium videos requires a subscription fee.
In 2018, Pornhub started accepting privacy-driven cryptocurrency verge (XVG) and Tron (TRX) as payment options for customers. In January 2020 it addressed price volatility in cryptocurrencies through inclusion and stable tethering (USDT) in US dollars. Today PornHub also accepts Dash (DASH), Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Waves (WAVES), ZCash (ZEC), and NEM (XEM).
Although the Dash and PumaPay privacy coins were added as support and removed from the list, the website now supports payments in 16 cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin. Interestingly, despite the company’s widely documented collapse, Ripple’s XRP token is one of the newest additions.
Dogecoin additions are excellent – Dogecoin is usually considered a meme by crypto insiders. It has recently received more attention outside of crypto, in part due to Elon Musk’s attempts to promote the project.
Crypto payment options are supported in the US and many other countries. For some EU countries, the website requires a bank transfer.
How Pornhub Pays Performers
Brazilian adult artist Gween Black has used Pornhub to distribute content for three years. She recently described how the platform pays for her as part of an article on VICE Motherboard. She stated that she gets paid monthly via USDT, divided into several services: They get income from free video ads, Pornhub bonuses [based on watching videos on this system, fan club (monthly user subscription), Model Hub sales (paid download and full video), tips, personalized video requests and live cameras.
In the article, Black and other adult artists such as Ali the Great told VICE that they expect their income to decrease due to the credit card company. It’s good to say that few men pay for porn to get started, and a credit card ban is another reason not to. In 2018, when the only crypto payment options for Pornhub were XVG, Zencash and Tron, Pornhub announced that cryptocurrencies accounted for less than 1% of purchases made on the platform.
While men may not want to give up crypto to pay for adult content, the players seem ready to accept it. Mindgeek stated in March 2020, long before crypto payments became the only payment option, 10 per cent of Pornhub players had accepted crypto payments.
Pornhub Populace Been On the Rise
In terms of traffic to its website, 2020 was a fantastic year for Pornhub. In a March post on the Coronavirus Insights blog, the company said traffic on the site started surging as communities worldwide were blocked and daily routines due to social exclusion and the obligation to work from home, disconnected.
Traffic peaked on March 25 after the company offered free Pornhub rewards as part of a campaign to encourage people to stay on board and stay out of social circles. The website updated the post in June and shows a graphic showing that website traffic is still well above pre-Covid-19 levels.
Similarweb ranked pornhub 9th in the world and 8th in the US. Only one other adult video streaming website has a higher ranking than Pornhub globally – Xvideos is ranked 7th globally and 12th in the United States with 2.95 billion visits.