Several projects are cropping up across the sex industry that allows adult content creators and their fans to integrate crypto and NFTs.
Adult content creators are turning to crypto-based platforms after mainstream financial and tech firms have moved to cut them off from cash payments. Adult performers told The Post that corporate America’s shunning of the sex industry — which generates between US$10 billion and US$12 billion a year in the US annually — has them worried about their livelihood.
Earlier this summer, Visa suspended payments for ads on Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek after the credit card giant was named in a lawsuit filed by a woman who says a sex tape that was filmed without her consent when she was 13 years old was posted on the site. Mastercard has also cut ties with Pornhub.
An adult performer who made the jump to WetSpace after OnlyFans announced its ban said the move gives her peace of mind that she will be paid.
Paying in crypto for sex
Several projects are cropping up across the sex industry that allows adult content creators and their fans to integrate crypto and NFTs.
NFTreats, for example, hosts an online magazine, Treats Zine, that helps onboard erotic artists to crypto through educational content. Notably, NFTreats lets artists split the proceeds from NFT sales with their team of up to four collaborators. NFTreats focuses on featuring elevated, sensual artwork that, in addition to being erotic, is inclusive and thoughtful.
“[Porn] doesn’t have to always end in that huge dopamine hit,” said Ernest, co-founder, and chief product officer at NFTreats, an inclusive, Polygon-based NFT marketplace for erotic art. The creative goes by his first name professionally.
“Sexuality is a big part of our existence, so let’s make engaging with our sexuality online a nice experience. And sex education, too, I think is a big part of that,” he added.
Sex-to-Earn: People to get physical for Crypto?
A cryptocurrency startup called SEXN (most likely a play on the popular move-to-earn running app STEPN) is hoping to convince people that sex-to-earn is not only functionally possible—through a series of biometric monitors, apps, and NFTs—but profitable.
SEXN offers “two of the indispensable things that humans love most: sex and money,” according to the company’s Twitter bio. Similar to play-to-earn standard-bearer Axie Infinity, users will first buy tiered NFTs that allow them to earn tokens. It’s a concept that’s banking on the idea that when it comes time to get intimate with oneself or others, users will stop the action, and start a sex-timer on their phones to earn the company’s tokens.
Web3 supposedly promises a new model of the internet, free from the restrictions that plague the centralized Web2 – but for sex workers, the same old patterns of censorship occur even in this brave new era. “It’s still the same, they still have to follow the same rules, they’re still governed by FOSTA/SESTA, which means … they censor us, they don’t allow us to be on their platform, they don’t play nice with us,” says sex worker Allie Eve Knox, who started selling NFTs of her work in 2020. “Web3, any kind of technology, it’s still not going to take that away.”
After connecting a crypto wallet to an account and downloading the SEXN app, users are first tasked with buying NFTs, which range in rarity and can be used to earn tokens created by the project itself. Dubbed “Sex Organ Token” (yes, really) or $SOT, these tokens went live on June 1 and can be acquired by completing in-app tasks, all of which revolve around using one’s phone to measure sexual activity. $SOT raised just over US$100,000 before launch.
