Pornhub, one of the most famous porn websites in the world, now also accepts payments in bitcoin. The website with about 130 million daily visitors was recently banned by PayPal, but thanks to Bitcoin it has an alternative payment network that has many privacy benefits for users.

It ??is and remains a bit controversial for many people: porn. Yet the porn industry is one of the internet’s biggest success stories. Pornhub, one of the most famous porn websites, has a whopping 130 million daily visitors and ranks number 9 on a list of the most visited websites in the world. Just one spot lower than Wikipedia.

Since last week, Pornhub also accepts bitcoin as a means of payment for the platform’s paid services, the company said. Given Pornhub’s market position, this is quite an interesting development.

“As a leader in adult content with over 130 million visitors per day, Pornhub is excited to now offer two widely-used and leading digital currencies for our users. Our team continues to pave the way for tech development, testing and implementing new technology for everyday consumers far ahead of the mainstream market.” ??? Pornhub Vice President Corey Price, press release

The decision to accept bitcoin payments comes after a turbulent period for Pornhub. Payment provider PayPal stopped providing services to Pornhub at the end of 2019 and since then it is no longer possible to pay for services on the website via PayPal. Whether the old specter of censorship rears its head here again or whether something else is at play is not entirely clear.

What is certain is that it was a big problem for Pornhub, because PayPal was widely used on the platform. Pornhub indicated at the time that it would look for alternative payment channels. Presumably, that led to Pornhub now also accepting bitcoin.

Advantages

Bitcoin has a number of advantages over PayPal: it is apolitical, amoral, free from censorship and accessible to everyone. It is an alternative and decentralized system without dependencies to third parties. Unlike PayPal, the Bitcoin network will never reject transactions from Pornhub.

In addition, Bitcoin is not identity-based, which provides inherent privacy benefits to users. Of course, there are many reasons why some people prefer to keep payments to porn websites separate from their other payments. In that case, Bitcoin is a more discreet option.

These benefits have also been identified in the past by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. The adoption of Bitcoin by the porn industry has therefore been anticipated for some time.

“Bitcoin would be convenient for people who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to use the cards they have, either don’t want the spouse to see it on the bill or don’t trust giving their number to ” porn guys”, or afraid of recurring billing.” – Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcointalk

Porn, the Internet & Bitcoin

The rise of the internet and the porn industry went hand in hand. It is sometimes said that porn has made the internet great, but the argument is probably just as valid the other way around.

It is of course also a match made in heaven : instead of going to a store with the blush of shame, you can simply access a worldwide and virtually unlimited range from the privacy and comfort of your own home. It opened new doors for the porn industry: a global reach, without (or hardly any) censorship and at much lower distribution costs.

The internet also benefited. In the 1990s people thought the internet was still very abstract and complicated and people often did not understand what you could do with it. Online porn gave a concrete answer to this and showed that the internet was a serious innovation that makes new revenue models possible. Now, more than twenty years later, the ‘biggest’ companies in the world are no longer banks, but tech companies that grew thanks to the internet. Nowadays, a company without e-commerce or a website no longer participates. The porn industry turned out to be at the forefront.

The parallels are perhaps obvious: just like the internet, Bitcoin also seems to be perfect for the porn industry, and vice versa. Some people therefore hope that a similar symbiosis will develop between the two as was the case with the rise of the internet. The adoption of Bitcoin by a leading market leader such as Pornhub can play an important role in this.