LOS ANGELES—Like a bucking bronco, bitcoin has been taking everyone for a ride of late, stoking talk of a bubble in the process. That is to be expected; after all, the entire nature of bitcoin lends itself to wild speculations literal and emotional. Still, you have to admit there’s something special about a currency that’s also a commodity. An intoxicating concoction made from geographic fluidity and open-source software, it lights a fire in people and gets their juices flowing. Add in a generous dash of anonymity and a dollop of libertarian zeal, and voilà, you have porn… I mean, bitcoin… I mean…
HuffPo took a look today at the idea of bitcoin-porn industry simpatico, too. Interestingly, especially in light of a recent story reported by Fox Business News involving the adult industry and former Wall Street execs who used to work for a certain company, the first person interviewed in the HuffPo piece also is a former Goldman Sachs employee. Small world.
According to Fred Ehrsam, the "former Goldman Sachs currency trader who left a desk in New York to create Coinbase, a company that processes bitcoin payments for merchants,” the digital currency and porn go together like soup and sandwiches. Not only is porn a traditional early adopter of new technologies, he argues, but the types of services the industry uses in its everyday existence—online hosting, web design, etc.—also frequently happen to be run by bitcoin early adopters.
“If porn sites start to see they can pay their suppliers in bitcoins,” writes Eleazar David Melendez for HuffingtonPost.com, “they will likely be willing to accept the currency themselves.”
Melendez also spoke with Amelia G from BlueBlood.com, which just started taking bitcoins as payment for membership. “Because bitcoin functions pretty much as cash, it has a vast advantage over other options,” she told him.
Her comments also underscore one of the more intriguing—and for some, disturbing—aspects of bitcoin; namely, the fact that it truly is the closest thing to digital cash in terms of the immediate anonymity of the transactional relationship.
As the HuffPo piece reports, “G’s website began accepting bitcoins as payment on Wednesday. To promote the new initiative, she offered free BlueBlood.com T-shirts to the first 100 people who signed up to use the service.
“A few did, G said, but they turned down the T-shirt: ‘They told me it would kind of defeat the purpose if they still had to put their mailing address in an online form.’”
In other words, as far as the site is concerned, they are somewhat anonymous customers, like any customer who walks into a brick-and-mortar retail store unless they're a regular. Even after they have paid, in this case for a membership, they remain anonymous if they use bitcoin, just as the retail customer does if s/he pays with cash. It's the one benefit the traditional adult book store has had over online transactions, but that too may have seen its day.
Perhaps Polish computer programmer Kacper Ciésla put that concept best when he told Melendez, “I really don't know much about the profile of an average Joe who pays for porn, but if that was me, I would not like to have this listed on my credit card statement.”
All embarrassment aside, at least we're talking about people willing to pay for porn!
