VISA and Mastercard cut ties! Cryptocurrency becomes the only payment method for Pornhub premium memberships

The controversy surrounding the world's largest adult website, Pornhub, has escalated as Visa and Mastercard announced last week that they are cutting ties with the platform. Now, the platform's premium memberships are only accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method.

World's Largest Adult Platform Sparks Controversy

The New York Times published an article on December 4th criticizing the adult website Pornhub for allowing videos featuring minors to be posted on its platform. The author further emphasized that the platform's content, including racism, rape, sexual abuse, and the objectification of women, has had a negative impact on society.

Following the publication of the article, two major credit card payment companies, VISA and Mastercard, immediately cut ties with Pornhub. Mastercard stated that after investigating and confirming that the platform violated official conduct standards, they chose to terminate credit card support for Pornhub. Mastercard mentioned that they are currently investigating potential illegal content on other websites. Visa stated that despite the investigation being incomplete, they decided to suspend credit card services for Pornhub on Thursday.

In response, Pornhub expressed disappointment in the actions of the two companies, as they had announced two days prior that they were implementing review measures to prevent abuse, unauthorized activities, and the posting of images or videos of minors on the site. Despite these efforts, the payment companies chose to cut off financial services. Pornhub stated:

"This news is a heavy blow to the hundreds of thousands of models and content creators who rely on our platform for their livelihood."

Limited to Cryptocurrency Payments Only

In fact, these two credit card companies were not the first to proactively cut off payment services for Pornhub. In November 2019, PayPal ceased its financial cooperation with Pornhub citing its terms of use that prohibit business content related to "certain sexually oriented products and services."

After the financial services were terminated, Pornhub began accepting an increasing number of cryptocurrency payments. As of today, Pornhub accepts Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dash (DASH), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), NEM (XEM), Tether (USDT), Tron (TRX), Verge (XVG), ZCash (ZEC), and Waves (WAVES).

The Real Victims

While Pornhub now exclusively accepts cryptocurrency payments, which is seen as a positive for the market, the crucial aspect is whether Pornhub's official response to this incident will raise awareness about issues such as racism, rape, and sexual abuse in its content. However, the sanctions imposed by VISA and Mastercard on the platform seem to affect the content creators more than Pornhub itself.

According to adult performer and cryptocurrency investor Allie Eve Knox, Pornhub's business largely relies on advertising revenue and is less affected by credit card companies. However, if performers cannot use Visa and Mastercard, they will have trouble earning money, which poses a significant problem as many rely on it as their main source of income.