OnlyFans Parent Company Buys $20 Million Worth of Ethereum – A Boost To ETH Price?

OnlyFans, the well-known adult content subscription platform, has made a bold move into the world of cryptocurrencies. Its parent company, Fenix International, recently revealed its significant investment of nearly $20 million in Ether (ETH) in 2022. 

According to official financial filings submitted to the UK corporate registry, Fenix International acquired nearly $20 million worth of ETH over a two-year period.

While the company’s investment in Ether demonstrates its progressive approach, it wasn’t immune to the market’s inherent volatility. By the end of November 2022, the value of Ether had plummeted by $8.5 million, leading to an impairment loss on the investment.

The remaining carrying amount of Ethereum stands at $11.434 million, reflecting the broader trends and uncertainties in the cryptocurrency market.

OnlyFans Ventures Beyond Traditional Offerings

The move to invest in Ether aligns with OnlyFans’ broader strategy of diversification and technological innovation. Investing in intangible assets with an “indefinite useful life” showcases the company’s willingness to embrace emerging technologies like blockchain, positioning itself at the forefront of industry trends.

The disclosure about Fenix’s acquiring a substantial amount of Ether has not seemed to provide a lift yet to the price of the crypto. At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $1,636, down -0.8% in the last 24 hours, and sustaining a slight 2.2% loss in the last seven days, data from crypto market tracker Coingecko shows.

The financial filings offer a glimpse into OnlyFans’ multi-faceted performance. Despite the challenges posed by its cryptocurrency investment, the company reported impressive financial results for the year ending November 2022. 

With revenue surpassing the $1 billion mark, driven by an influx of over 50 million new users and more than a million content creators, OnlyFans solidified its position as a revenue-generating powerhouse. Users collectively spent an astounding $5.5 billion on the platform.

OnlyFans Pioneers NFT Integration And Celebrity Trading Cards

Leonid Radvinsky, the visionary entrepreneur of Ukrainian origin who acquired OnlyFans in 2018, has reaped the rewards of the platform’s surging popularity.

The filings unveil that Radvinsky amassed dividends approximating $485 million since the inception of the previous year, in line with the escalating demand for OnlyFans’ offerings.

This recent crypto venture is not the company’s first stride into the digital asset domain. In early 2022, OnlyFans facilitated a pioneering move by enabling verified creators to replace their profile pictures with Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Moreover, in June of the same year, former OnlyFans executives unveiled Zoop, a celebrity trading card platform leveraging the Ethereum scaling solution Polygon. Zoop allowed users to trade 3D digital playing cards depicting their favorite celebrities.

The disclosure of Fenix International’s Ethereum holdings dovetailed with an industry-wide trend, as adult content creators began flocking to Friend.tech, a decentralized social media platform rooted in the cryptocurrency realm. This rush underscores how crypto’s recent surge has not only captured financial markets’ attention but also influenced sectors far beyond conventional investments.

Featured image from Verità e Affari

How Crypto Empowered Porn Creators In 2021: Less Cant More Freedom

The crypto industry saw the opportunity of a lifetime this year when OnlyFans, a platform known mostly for its adult content, announced it would ban sexually explicit content. The crypto and porn industry together represents a very profitable merge that has just started to happen.

The world of payment methods has a history of hypocrisy, control, and morals, and it tends to not support anything related to sex work.

Reportedly, earlier in the year OnlyFans had decided to shut down all sexually explicit content because of pressure from banks and payment processors. There was a huge backlash and the ban stopped days after its announcement, alleging that the platform had “secured assurances necessary” from the banks.

The platform’s founder and chief executive told Time that banks were refusing to process adult content-related payments.

“OnlyFans stands for inclusion”, they said, but they had been trying to distance themselves from the porn industry, interested in launching a streaming service –which doesn’t allow adult content.

Payment methods have been a burden for porn creators worldwide for years. Their gains are often subject to frozen funds, huge losses, and since there’s not much protection and support offered for sex workers, they need to be extra careful to not become subject to scams and other dangers.

So anonymity and safe digital wallets go really well with this industry. Naturally, many creators and producers have started to see an answer in crypto.

Crypto’s Not The Only One With A Bad Reputation

Cristobal Medoza producer and co-creator of a top Argentinian porn channel called ‘My Bad Reputation’ was one of many to adopt crypto in order to find financial stability and more opportunities. He gave us inside comments on his personal experience, allowing us to take a peek at the industry people love to consume from but try not to support.

New platforms are surging that connect the porn and crypto industry. A great niche for all parties if successful –it needs to be simple, safe, and well-executed–.

It’s a demystification that goes both ways: the amount of porn consumers is very high. If adult content platforms are related to crypto, this might become a blasting cap of mainstream adoption.

Medonza explained that the major porn platforms have already adopted crypto (paying in Bitcoin and USDT), which contrasts with other payment services offered that are very restrictive and using them comes with too many complications and downsides.

However, many smaller adult content platforms don’t use crypto yet, and that becomes a major problem that comes with huge fees to convert the creators’ money to digital assets.

Mendoza added that porn creators are often affected by the banks, which he claims have closed the accounts of many and frozen their funds when finding out their income is related to adult content.

He commented on the OnlyFans sketchy days of adult content baning, alleging that a large of new pornography platforms started to appear, trying to take that big chunk of a very profitable market.

There’s always going to be someone that will take a stake at that market because it generates huge gains. At the end, OnlyFans took a step back because they knew they would loose too much money and others would quickly fill into their role.

Mendoza stated that his adult content channel takes its payments through Binance, and it has become a great option since “it doesn’t question where the incomes come from, there are no types or morality issues with how we make the money,” plus they can easily exchange it.

Further than using crypto as a better payment method, it has also allowed him and his co-creator to make a few investments through trading and hodling.

There’s many people from the industry that still don’t know how to use crypto as a tool for payments and administration.

I think [they] would greatly benefit from crypto … comissions are low, there’s full control over one’s own income.

He mentioned there are many new projects that claim to link the adult content industry with crypto but some are scams, and creators need to be wary and start to educate themselves about cyber security.

Crypto total market cap at $2,1 trillion in the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com

American Rapper Tyga To Launch OnlyFans Crypto-Competitor

Crypto has recently been suggested as a fix for the woes popular adult content platform OnlyFans has been going through. The company had announced last week that it planned to remove all of its adult content by October first. Speculations were that this was due to payment processors Visa and MasterCard making payment harder for the company due to the nature of its foremost content. But it was clarified that it was in fact due to the company wanting investors since they had been turned down due to the type of content they host on their site.

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This had sent a shockwave through the community and the news world. Crypto enthusiasts started suggesting that things like this could be avoided with decentralized platforms and payment services like cryptocurrencies. With Bitcoin leading in the suggestions for the type of crypto to be used for this.

The company has not responded to any of this, seemingly steadfast in its resolve to purge the site of all pornographic content. To this end, America rapper Tyga has announced that he plans to release his own platform that will be a direct competitor to OnlyFans. The platform the rapper plans to launch will be built on the Ethereum network.

Tyga Exits OnlyFans

Rapper Tyga had opened an OnlyFans account almost a year ago. Tyga had been a strong advocate for the platform and had started a modeling agency, Too Raww, that was dedicated to helping content creators get started on OnlyFans. Following the ban on pornographic content, the rap star took to his Instagram to announce his exit from the platform.

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Tyga announced that he had deleted his account on the platform and he was launching his own OnlyFans competitor, Myystar, which would provide content creators more freedom and a better cut of earnings. While also providing higher quality viewing for the audience. According to the press release, Myystar will only take 10% off creators’ earnings compared to the 20% on OnlyFans.

Building With A Crypto Backbone

Myystar’s most striking feature yet remains the fact that the platform is being built on the Ethereum network. The rapper seems to have listened to the suggestions coming out of the market recently and has run with this.

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In addition to providing better quality and a higher percentage of earnings, Myystar will also allow content creators to sell NFTs on the platform, and also, features that are relevant to the music industry. This will provide content creators the ability to mint pornographic content in order to sell them off as NFTs.

Crypto total market cap continues upward trend | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on TradingView.com

A countless number of sex workers and adult content creators have been affected by the OnlyFans ban on pornographic content. Tyga told Forbes that he wanted to give these people hope with his platform. “I know how many people make a lot of money on OnlyFans, and that’s where most of their revenue is at. I want to give those people hope,” Tyga said.

The Myystar platform is scheduled to launch in October, following the ban of pornographic content on OnlyFans happening on October 1st. The site is currently up and is allowing creators to sign up ahead of the launch.

Featured image on Discotech, chart from TradingView.com