Adult entertainment powerhouse Mindgeek will be adding crypto to its payment options. The owner of Pornhub and Brazzers announced Tuesday it was entering into a partnership with cryptocurrency Verge.
The partnership is a notable one due to Mindgeek’s enormous footprint in the adult business. The company owns several major ‘lines’ and production studios, including Brazzers and Digital Playground, and controls Playboy TV and its former property, Spice TV.
The announcement “sent Verge prices soaring more than 22% in the hours before the announcement, as investors awaited the long-teased partnership announcement,” according to Fortune.com.
Verge began hinting that a big partner was coming last month, Fortune.com reports, when it launched a crowdfunding campaign with a target of collecting 75 million worth of the crypto.
Mindgeek got Digital Playground director Stormy Daniels, the hottest porn star in the world right now (and someone who knows a thing or two about electronic money transfers), to promote the partnership in a video.
Fortune reports:
“Pornhub is a global organization with nearly a hundred million daily users,” said Verge founder Justin Sunerok. “This partnership represents an enormous market with a global reach that will compete with fiat currencies. It’s huge for Verge and we’re extremely excited to finally be able to announce it.”
Mindgeek will initially accept the coins at three of its sites—Pornhub, Brazzers, and Nutaku, an adult gaming portal. Other sites will follow.
“?While the adult industry is becoming more mainstream, there are still a lot people who prefer to be secretive or private about it,” said Corey Price, vice president at Pornhub in a statement. “By accepting crypto, we are making the purchasing of content even more secure, which will appeal to those people. With the added incentive, we expect to see an uptick on the purchasing of content.”
The adult entertainment industry, while usually quick to adopt new technologies, dragged its feet on cryptocurrencies. A push took place in 2013, with several companies, including Wicked Pictures, making initial plans to do so, but none of those came to fruition, in part (ironically) because of the fluctuations of the currency’s value.
Some porn biz-attached idiots have also jumped into cryptocurrencies, to the amusement of all. Exhibit A: CoxxxCoin.
