OnlyFans today announced that it would ban sexually explicit content from its app in the coming year. This is a huge shift for OnlyFans. It completely disrupted adult content and allowed performers to connect with their fans directly via subscriptions. The shutdown offers the opportunity for the crypto industry to capitalize on this shutdown and the recent wave of consumer-friendly crypto payments infrastructure products in order to create a platform that will not crumble under the pressure of payment providers.
OnlyFans, which had been trying to raise at a valuation of unicorn and was having a lot of difficulty despite large revenues, has not minced words about the reasons for today's fundamental change. These changes were made to comply with the demands of our banking partners. OnlyFans has partially read the statement.
Despite the widespread destigmatization and acceptance of sex and adult content in popular culture, banks are still conservative and cautious about handling money that flows through these platforms. These platform operators are often faced with the constant anxiety of knowing that their platforms could lose favor with these providers and lose all of their money. These platforms are also prevented from accessing growth capital by the vice clauses in many venture capital firms' underpinnings. These financial institutions are unlikely to be friendly with adult content platforms, and it is likely that the platforms and their creators will move on.
OnlyFans' decision to dump porn appears like a betrayal of their creator community. This is something creators will remember when they embrace any copycats that may come along. While they will likely be skeptical of new platforms in terms of how they handle payments provider disputes, it is likely that ambitious platforms seeking to grow will not see a different outcome. Although this would be different for crypto-native platforms it is still a significant risk for creators to adopt a platform whose users might not know how they can pay for their content.
Crypto payments have been slowly adopted by the porn industry. Pornhub announced in 2018 that they would accept cryptocurrency payments. Now, it is 2020 and Visa and Mastercard have abandoned the platform. Crypto payments and ACH bank transfer are the only options to pay for the premium subscription service. Although there are a few existing crypto platform players, such as SpankChain and CumRocket, that cater to niche audiences, it is possible for an upstart or established player to enter this market.
It is difficult to make it easy to onboard new users to a new platform or their first cryptocurrency wallet. This is despite the fact that more traditional web payment systems have become so simplified and adult content is still plentiful. Although it is not the most straightforward onboarding request for a new crypto porn site (KYC), which requires users to upload their passports or drivers licenses to verify their crypto purchases, the market matures and the difficulties of setting up a wallet for the first time are less complicated. There are many benefits.
The launchpad for new technologies has been porn. Despite crypto's popularity increasing in recent months, it still remains low in penetration in the actual apps people use. There are many startups and solutions that aim to simplify buying and sending crypto. It seems like the industry has the potential to fill the gap left by OnlyFans' exit and create a more innovative platform that is all about crypto.
