Pornhub says it now accepts user payments, such as for buying Premium subscriptions, in Verge cryptocurrency
So you can be extra incognito — Pornhub has started accepting cryptocurrency as a payment option, the company announced today. The site now accepts Verge cryptocurrency …
Context & Ripple Effects
The crypto option lands on top of the subscription business Pornhub built when it introduced its $9.99/month Premium tier in 2015 — until now billed through conventional rails. The related coverage shows why that dependency is fragile: PayPal had already stopped supporting Pornhub payments by late 2019, cutting off income channels for over a hundred thousand performers.
First-order effects
- Pornhub's Premium subscribers gain a payment path that bypasses card networks and PayPal entirely, and Verge gains a high-traffic mainstream merchant as proof of real-world use.
Second-order effects
- When PayPal and then Visa and Mastercard subsequently cut Pornhub off — leaving it apparently accepting only cryptocurrency for Premium, per the later crypto-only report — this 2018 decision turns from novelty into the site's surviving payment rail.
Third-order effects
- If processor de-risking of adult platforms continues, the sector structurally migrates toward cryptocurrency and self-built infrastructure — the same instinct behind Pornhub launching its own VPNHUB service weeks later — rather than relying on financial intermediaries who can sever it at will.
The trend: Adult platforms are building payment redundancy outside the card-network system as banks and processors progressively de-risk the category.