By Sofia Barrett-Ibarria. Two years ago, Gabi was struggling to maintain a career in the adult industry. Every hour that you spend online without getting tipped, you can just hear the ranking number dropping in the back of your head. One site, Gabi says, required a percent cut of her tips, in addition to the rights to use her image for advertising purposes as they saw fit. Gabi considered giving up camming for good, when she came across a promotional raffle on Twitter for Cryptotitties, a cam site that runs on cryptocurrency.
Interested participants could buy tickets using Spankchain, a blockchain-based payment platform currently in beta, designed specifically for use within the adult industry. Gabi, who for a time worked as a Spankchain brand ambassador, believes cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies offer a viable solution to widespread issues with payment processing.
As adult performer Janice Griffith wrote for Medium in , blockchain technologies like Spankchain can offer performers greater control of their financial future. A switch to cryptocurrency can also offer greater creative freedom.
For example, ManyVids, a popular camming platform that accepts credit card payments, forbids depictions of fetish acts including urination, genital insertions with objects other than dildos or vibrators, or sleeping on camera, as outlined in their terms of service. Long before Backpage. They want to take over and take all the credit for moving that kind of stuff into the mainstream.
Meta Needs to Step In. Cam performers like Gabi and Grey, fluent in the abstract language of crypto and blockchain technology, hold incredible power to bring cryptocurrency into mainstream use. However, despite looking to the adult industry as models of success, tech companies are routinely shutting sex workers out of crypto and tech spaces. In , Intimate submitted an application to exhibit at Web Summit , an annual global technology conference. Callon-Butler believes this policy is a form of sex shame.
