The sexual wellness market is expected to double over the upcoming years from $62 billion today to $125 billion by 2026.
As the sex-positive movement continues to change social norms and lift taboos worldwide, the adult industry is set for a surge of innovation, offering several opportunities for businesses and users along the way.
Read Also: Best Ways To Earn Money While Traveling Around The World
Let's explore how disruptive new tech like blockchain can help the industry fight stereotypes and bias, add transparency, and ensure compliance, privacy, safety, and sustainability.
Bumps in the road
Despite several sexual revolutions we had in the past and the extremely high demand for sex-based content and products we see today, most of us still look at the adult industry through a negative prism. It's still considered to be something dirty, sleazy, bad, and shady – something to stay away from.
Existing businesses within the adult ecosystem in the United States and many other countries are completely legal. Still, the industry is heavily undervalued and underserved due to bias and many unrecognized market segments.
Some entrepreneurs have great ideas for sex products and services. Still, any entrepreneur in this industry will tell you that starting and running a business in this area is incredibly difficult. You cannot create a bank account, and most legal and recognized payment gateways will not work with you. PayPal and Stripe will absolutely not do business with anyone from the adult industry.
Startups in the adult industry cannot promote their ads on most social media platforms like Facebook. Love hotels cannot advertise on Booking.com. There are so many judgments and stigmas out there that you really have to think twice before making an effort to tap into the industry.
However, with the advancement and proliferation of blockchain technology, there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel for the industry.
Blockchain as a "rescue ranger"
Blockchain in the adult industry is all about security, empowerment, protection, and removing bias.
Let's think of the adult industry as proof of concept. Blockchain allows us to transact securely in a decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace and behave under a pseudonym, with this added element of trust.
Every market would want that. Data privacy and security are becoming increasingly important. As well as the ability to make transactions respectfully and confidentially. These unique blockchain attributes create interesting and thought-provoking implications for future use cases and scenarios.
Blockchain allows telling people, "the data is yours, and you can do with it whatever you want." This helps create a robust and fair space for the future. Blockchain helps disintermediate the banks and payment gateways that are causing some big problems today and enables fixing the payment issues in the industry.
Numerous studies confirm that users don't want to use their credit cards to buy sex-related goods and services. But the "intimate token" can be the source of trust they crave to solve this layer of problems while lowering barriers to entry.
Blockchain technology allows people to transact privately with built-in trust and transparency.
Besides, blockchain helps facilitate and improve adult content creation and monetization, protect sex workers from discrimination and abuse, etc.
Let's dive deep to see how decentralization helps the adult industry overcome its most significant obstacles.
Blockchain in the adult industry: use cases
Payment processing
As mentioned above, most payment engines, including PayPal, do not work with adult products.
As such, sex industry players have to overcome many barriers because they cannot use conventional payment systems.
SexTech companies also have to pay almost twice as much processing costs as other non-adult businesses.
Creating a payment processing system for SexTech platforms is a huge market opportunity. On the other hand, blockchain can be a default platform per se.
The merger of sexual wellness products and blockchain will likely build a symbiotic relationship, allowing both adult entertainment and SexTech companies and consumers to access fast, low-fee, and anonymous payments.
Moreover, blockchain allows adult content platforms to implement reward systems where consumers receive tokens they can redeem and use for purchases.
For instance, SpankChain is a startup that pioneers Ethereum-based payments for adult industry models and merchants.
Adult content creation and monetization
Imagine that adult content creators could own both their media and content. Sex content creators need an infrastructure that would empower them to take control of their audience's data. This is the bright future of NFT in the ever-growing adult content market.
Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are defined as cryptographic and visually distinct assets. These tokens on the blockchain reveal the ownership of a particular digital item.
It's time for meaningful NFT utilities to be used by adult content creators. This is the industry that would benefit significantly from NFT marketplaces.
The adult content sector is the market leader in technological solutions. Therefore, it is logical that this sector shows significant interest in the crypto community.
One option for adult content creators to monetize their work is to sell video clips as NFTs. These marketplaces are familiar, and clips can be stored on the blockchain. Cryptocurrency allows secure transactions for buyers, especially when they want to make payments. NFT merchants can also make higher profits than many existing adult content platforms.
Safety and security of sex industry workers
It is incredibly unfair when an entire industry suffers from a lack of transparency and security, isn't it?
Due to the nature of the industry, sex workers do not receive the respect and dignity they deserve and are often taken advantage of or put under stress. Although adult female models earn more on average than their male counterparts, they still don't reap all the fruits of their work's value.
Sex workers face discrimination, harassment, and other human rights violations. This is often the result of the lack of privacy and security but is also the result of a huge power imbalance in the workplace. As in many industries where the employer has all the cards, sex workers are often mistreated and underrespected.
Although prostitution is legal in many countries, there's still a high risk of assault and violence against prostitutes, especially when strangers pick them up on the streets.
Also, going with an unfamiliar escort is never safe as clients can be drunk or drugged and can do harm to a prostitute that remains unprotected. By verifying users, recording their transactions on the blockchain, ensuring maximum privacy, and at the same time connecting a reputation ranking system to their profiles, we can make the "world's oldest business" much safer.
