Pornhub is now only accepting cryptocurrency for its premium service

After Visa and Mastercard both pulled off support for payments on Pornhub, the adult website is now only accepting payments in cryptocurrency.

Pornhub’s business seems to depend heavily on advertising revenue which is not going to be impacted by this change in payment. (Pornhub)

Pornhub is now only accepting cryptocurrency payments for its premium service. This development comes in after both Visa and Mastercard pulled off support for payments from the adult website last week.

All the big credit card companies cut off payment ties Pornhub after a New York Times article reported about the website allowing videos of women being assaulted and minors having sex to be uploaded.

According to a report in Decrypt, Visa and Mastercard's decision to not support payments on Pornhub is the latest and the “most impactful” instance of a payment processor blocking funds to the site and its performers. It all started in 2019 when Paypal started blocking payments to Pornhub performers in November.

Post that, Pornhub began accepting Tron, Verge and Tether payments. Now, Pornhub also accepts Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Monero, NEM, Tether, Tron, ZCash and Waves (all different forms of cryptocurrency).

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Pornhub's site now states it is only accepting crypto. (Decrypt)

Pornhub's site now states it is only accepting crypto. (Decrypt)

The adult website has seen a considerable increase in traffic since the pandemic began touching 3.6 billion in August this year, as per reports.

While Pornhub has not officially reacted to this change in payment status, an adult performer and cryptocurrency veteran Allie Eve Knox told Decrypt that it is unfortunate that Visa and Mastercard are playing legal games to hold Pornhub accountable. Knox added that it is not secret that the website was operating in dubious ways and said that performers have been saying for a long time that Pornhub needs to be accountable and follow the law.

She added that the move by the likes of Visa and Mastercard would hurt content creators more than they would hurt Pornhub. If performers are not able to take Visa and Mastercard, they are not making money and that is problematic because a lot of these performers use this as their main source of income.

However, Pornhub's business seems to depend heavily on advertising revenue which is not going to be impacted by this change in payment.

As a follow-up to the NYT report, Pornhub has announced a series of changes to clean up the site including expanded moderation, banning downloads and also allowing only verified content creators to upload videos. Pornhub has also said that it is being targeted for being a porn site.