The cryptocurrency panel at this year’s XBIZ event (the adult-industry Golden Globes to AVN’s Oscars) in West Hollywood is smaller than past years’ crypto panels. Blame the bear market, blame the fact that concurrent panels feature “name” performers, or blame the fact that one of the panelists failed to show up. Either way, that doesn’t stop the 20 or so attendees from laughing at SpankChain CEO Ameen Soleimani’s booty puns and porn jokes.
“The great thing about adult is they’ll try anything,” he says about blockchain adoption in the adult industry, to the audience’s amusement. It’s a play on the perception that adult performers are willing to experiment on camera, but it also acknowledges the industry’s readiness to test out new technologies, often before more mainstream industries catch up.
Next to Soleimani sits Intimate.io’s cofounder and chief impact officer Leah Callon-Butler. There’s no explanation as to why the third scheduled panelist, CEO of Vice Industry Token Stuart Duncan, isn’t there—only some knowing looks. He’s an industry veteran, having created TV platforms for both Hustler and Penthouse in his 20-plus-year career as the CEO of Ten Broadcasting. Compared to him, both Callon-Butler and Soleimani are new to this world.
But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been welcomed. Though both announce their company’s payment gateways will soft launch within approximately a month, Intimate.io and SpankChain are currently operational in other ways. Intimate.io has partnered with multiple adult industry companies, and SpankChain’s cam site has been up and running for about six months. The former focuses more on privacy, advising adult businesses getting into blockchain, and creating a system for tracking users’ reputations (are they a safe client for an escort to take on?). The latter emphasizes creating an ecosystem for adult performers, including a platform and a full-blown economy.
“[Crypto] adoption will happen in porn,” Soleimani says with confidence. People excluded from the current financial system, he says, will opt for a new one.
“We need more people working on UX,” Callon-Butler adds, noting one of adoption’s biggest setbacks. People she talks to in the industry tend to have one of two responses to using cryptocurrency. The first is, “I’m a smart, tech-savvy person, but I don’t understand crypto,” and the second is, “I installed a crypto gateway years ago, and I didn’t see any revenue from it.”
These are varied challenges, and they’re not the only ones, as attendees at “Crypto: How Today’s Sites Use Tomorrow’s Currency” panel learn. For example, a hacker stole $40,000 from SpankChain after it launched. Lucky for the fledgling company, Soleimani tracked him down (he “can’t say how”) and gave the guy $5,000 to “thank him for finding the bug.” In the spirit of transparency, he published a post about it on Medium, titled, “We Got Spanked.”
As XBIZ senior technology editor Stephen Yagielowicz asks about the challenges of building token-based ecosystems, it becomes clear that the panelists didn’t get into crypto to get rich quick. They want to launch experimental, problem-solving tech in a space that’s been historically friendly to digital advancements—tech they could eventually apply to the wider world. Intimate.io’s blockchain reputation scoring could fit neatly into the larger ratings ecosystem currently used by services like Airbnb, Lyft, and Yelp (though it does conjure China’s plans for a “Black Mirror”-esque “social credit system”), and SpankChain is working on what Soleimani calls a “Spankcombinator,” an incubator where “value neutral” (non-adult) companies can take SpankChain’s tech and use it elsewhere. In return, they’ll give SpankChain equity in their projects. SpankChain is working with one such company so far.
One audience member, however, is stuck on tokens as stores of (increasing) value. When a man with chin-length hair asks the panelists whether the ultimate goal is to get their tokens listed on Binance, he’s sorely disappointed when both Callon-Butler and Soleimani shrug it off. After insisting how good Binance and other major exchanges are to more shrugs, the guy walks out of the room.
“We’re about solving real problems,” says Callon-Butler. “Not ‘When lambo.’”
Soleimani looks toward the door. “I think that guy was ‘when lambo.’” The audience laughs.