Pornhub Is Heating Up With Privacy Coins Zencash And Tron

Crypto in the porn industry is expanding but this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The porn industry, in particular, has a history of being early adopters of new technology for professionals and otherwise. Linked with pushing new tech-forward like e-commerce, VHS, and video streaming to name a few.

The porn industry is a hyper-competitive market which requires each player to constantly be looking for the newest tech to bring them forward. This often leads the industry to be first to integrate new tech to grow their customer base and deliver a better product.

For example, in the early days of credit cards, online portals for adult content were quick to accept the new payment method. Credit card payments and other fintech opened up opportunities for early adult businesses like Danni’s Hard Drive and her members only paywall – the “Hotbox”.

Launched in 1996, danni.com was a pioneering e-commerce business right alongside Amazon and eBay. Early on Danni’s Hard Drive would see so much traffic it would overload and crash its ISP’s servers. After a quick few years, the website would be making over $8M and help push other payment processing technologies into mass adoption.

More recently, online porn giant Pornhub is expanding the payment options for their customers and advertisers. Beginning with Verge, Pornhub is adding TRON and Zencash to the crypto they accept and are likely expand the options in the future.

What Pornhub Is Looking for in a Cryptocurrency

Pornhub isn’t the first major company to accept crypto. In fact, more mainstream businesses like Microsoft, Steam and Overstock have already been processing crypto payments. The adult industry is typically an early adopter but in this case, Pornhub was late to the block party.

However, even if they took some time to get here, Pornhub integrating crypto is a large step forward for retail adoption. Considering they aren’t just the biggest site in their category, but one of the biggest on the web – 27th on Alexa – Pornhub can be considered a bit of a trendsetter. But what does Pornhub see in cryptocurrencies and why these coins so far?

Going Private with Crypto

Privacy and anonymity; two very common themes in industries like that of Pornhub’s. As legitimate of a business Pornhub can be, the industry still carries a lot of baggage and connotation. As a result, crypto as a payment option may be quite attractive for customers of Pornhub who would rather remain clandestine.

As of now, the crypto that Pornhub has begun to adopt follows a shared theme of privacy and anonymity. Verge, a privacy coin designed for people and everyday use, was first to be accepted. Corey Price, VP of Pornhub said: “We’re extremely excited to offer our fans the ability to use crypto and think Verge, with its focus on anonymity, is the best option – whether for privacy, convenience or both!”

Whether Verge was the ‘best option’ is being debated hotly in the crypto community as the currency is facing a bit of a rocky road lately. However, bringing on more crypto payment options is in Pornhubs interest as they continue to push into new payment methods. TRON and Zencash are both in line with Pornhubs focus on their customers right to privacy and anonymity.

Corey Price this time commented: “[C]ryptocurrencies are especially viable in the adult entertainment industry because they are privacy-centric and incorporate more anonymity tools than traditional tender. ZenCash and TRON will make for solid additions to our cache of payment methods, and we’re excited for our fans to use them to purchase a myriad of things on our platform.”

Three’s a Party: Zencash and TRON Join Verge

Along with many other coins in the privacy category, TRON and Zencash are unique blockchain projects with some differentiating features.

Horizen – formerly Zencash

Zencash, now rebranded to Horizen, is a blockchain designed with default privacy to support a suite of products. Currently, Horizons ecosystem consists of its cryptocurrency Zen, along with a couple other products that have been built onto their chain including their ZenChat secure messaging app. In the future, Horizen will be expanding their privacy functionality to their own on chain DAO along with domain fronting tech that will help curb internet censorship.

TRON team photo

Similarly, TRON is a privacy-focused project with begins on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017. More recently, TRON had its ‘independence day’ after moving to its own Mainnet and migrating the TRX ERC20 tokens into newly minted Mainnet TRX. TRON’s cryptocurrency TRX, similar to XVG or ZEN would be the main focus for Pornhubs payment needs. However, like the other coins Pornhub has adopted, TRON has a suite of projects including a dApp ecosystem and platform.

There’s More to Come

Pornhub wasn’t the first to adopt crypto into porn. But it is understandable why the Porn giant is taking it slow and easing into these new relationships. Verge, Zencash and TRON are not the only privacy coins in the neighborhood yet it seems that Pornhub is going to get to know each coin a little before taking things to the next level.

With the blockchain being such a young and volatile space Pornhub is likely to continue this trend of slow and selective adoption. Pornhub understandably will continue to favor those cryptocurrencies which are focused on privacy and total anonymity. Good news is there are still a number of viable and lucrative projects that seem to fit the bill and could become the porn giants next hot relationship.