The world's largest adult website now only accepts cryptocurrency as a membership payment option

The world’s largest adult website appears to now only accept cryptocurrencies as a payment option for its premium memberships. The move was noticed on Pornhub today after Visa and Mastercard credit card services cut off payment support for the site last week.

Major credit card companies cut off the Canadian site after a New York Times article detailed a breach that reportedly allowed videos depicting underage girls and assaults on women.

Visa and Mastercard’s decisions are the latest and most impactful instances of payment processors freezing funds to Pornhub or its enforcers. In November 2019, PayPal began blocking payments for videos on Pornhub.

Just after being banned from using credit card services, Pornhub began accepting Verge (XVG), Tron (TRX), and Tether (USDT). Now, Pornhub also 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 as payment methods.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pornhub has seen a significant increase in traffic. According to data from tracking site SimilarWeb.com, by August 2020, Pornhub had 3.6 billion traffic, ranking 10th in the world.

Pornhub's business likely depends heavily on advertising revenue, which would not be affected by restrictions on credit card transactions.

Pornhub was founded in 2005 as a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based MindGeek, an IT platform for streaming entertainment companies. In a blog post published last week following the New York Times report, Pornhub announced a series of changes to clean up the site, including only allowing uploads from verified content creators, banning downloads, and expanding moderation of the site.

However, in another post, Pornhub said it was being unfairly singled out for being an adult site. "It's clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform. These conservative forces have spent 50 years demonizing Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, sex education, LGBTQ, women's rights, and even the American Library Association. Today, Pornhub is their enemy."