Sex Workers Took Refuge in Crypto. Now It’s Failing Them

https://www.wired.com/story/sex-workers-crypto-failing-them/

by belltaco • 3 years ago

43 52 3 years ago

The money quote for me is:

“You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” says Knox (an independent sex-worker). “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.” (Knox suspects she has ended up on a blacklist at Plaid, a provider of technology plumbing to large crypto exchanges like Gemini, Kraken, and Robinhood, leading to the repeated bans. Freya Petersen, spokesperson for Plaid, says no such list exists, but that all firms that wish to use its services are subject to a standard risk assessment process, factoring in the industry in which they operate.)

The only way around this would seem for sex workers to have their own wallet with keys that they control, but that still leaves them with no way to cash out, and landlords, car loans, and grocery stores do not accept crypto.

User232• 3 years ago

but that still leaves them with no way to cash out

Which has always been the primary criticism of cryptocurrency as, well, currency. It's not currency by definition if you have to "cash out" to spend.

Expurple2• 3 years ago

Well, if you have some zimbabwean dollars, in most parts of the world you pretty much have to "cash out" and convert to a different currency, if you want to spend these. If you have a "respectable" currency like EUR and, say, you need to pay taxes in the US, you still have to convert to USD, because the IRS only accepts USD. Are ZWL and EUR "real" currencies? It all comes down to the list of currencies that the other party accepts. Your bank can probably auto-convert EUR in your account to USD and make the payment seemless. But there are cards issued by crypto exchanges that can auto-convert your crypto for fiat payments as well

m00x4• 3 years ago

The only real use-case for crypto was doing crime. Criminals flocked to use it, but obviously the government was going to be shortly behind. I'm surprised it took this long to close down the exit nodes.

She could still use it to pay people that accept crypto, but most cryptocurrencies aren't great currencies since they fluctuate in value a lot.

Our current financial system has issues, but the best system for 99%+ of people.

askinionio• 3 years ago

The only real use-case for crypto was doing crime.

It was never any good at that, either. Cryptocurrency is somewhat hard to censor but easy to track. And in practice, people go through centralized exchanges because blockchains work so badly.

x-complexity• 3 years ago

Our current financial system has issues, but the best system for 99%+ of people.

I have to violently disagree with that statement.

For a good chunk of people (> 10%), the current system is a vampire on the efforts of people, draining them via transfer fees, account fees, overdraft fees & whatever new fee they can come up with today. Their failures are bailed out because "tHeY'rE tOo BiG tO fAiL", influencing politicians into using the funds of the State to give themselves a pillow to land on. They deem themselves to be above the effects of "the hand of the market" that everyone else has to go through. Screw that: They must be able to fail like the rest of us, with no soft landing given to them when they do so.

futurecat2• 3 years ago

In 2017, the World Bank reported 1.7 billion people are unbanked globally.

The current financial system is very far from being best for 99%+ of people.

futurecat2• 3 years ago

Chainanalysis reported in their 2023 Crypto Crime Report that only 0.24% of the volume of crypto transactions was for crime.

hypefi• 3 years ago

You sound like you don't know the pains to transfer money when you live in a country that does not have $ or € as their main currency, crypto has use for a lot of people in the world and it will regain traction once the scammers and the speculators will get tired of it

Justsignedup3• 3 years ago

If crypto is so not accepted in most places she'll get pennies on her dollar. It'll end up in company scrip all over again.

alphanullmeric• 3 years ago

I mean sure, if you make derivatives trading illegal, freeze bank accounts of people you disagree with and mandate transaction surveillance then anyone that wants to do what they want with their own money and not get spied on is a criminal.

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

If they own the keys, they could at least find someone to do P2P transfers with (presumably at a lower rates than market)

Some crypto ATMs allow cash withdrawals (again, at a rate favorable to the ATM)

phone86753095• 3 years ago

Running an all-cash business because you need to cash out your coins so the volatility doesn't kill you is really tough, especially when banks then won't deal with you depositing that cash into a bank account because they discriminate against your LEGAL business.

It just seems like cryptocurrencies are re-inventing the banking system without all of the pesky safeguards against fraud and abuse that hurts the first movers (not the actual plebs) while encoding their cultural biases into the tech that is supposed to be unencumbered by laws or cultural moires.

klntsky• 3 years ago

I suspect that this article is a propaganda piece that promotes these (false) ideas:

- crypto is for criminals

- it does not give you full control (false, custodial services don't)

- it is possible to ban all fiat exits

If you struggle with the last point, take a look at kycnot.me list.

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

Correct, you can't ban all fiat exits. However, this also undermines the argument for crypto about government control of fiat, since many of the exits of last resort rely on dealing with cash.

thephyber• 3 years ago

“… to ban all fiat exits”

This doesn’t matter. Every fiat exit that is banned creates more friction. Like a shopping cart that has left the parking lot and has the wheels locked, the transaction system becomes so difficult to use that it approaches impossible to use.

If someone is banned from taking a loan from all regulated banks then they are forced to deal with loan sharks / organized crime. That loss of competition and choice comes with additional friction and strings attached to every transaction. Worse transaction fees, less security, less scrupulous counterparties, less convenience of location, less liquidity (one OnlyFans creator in the story was making $500k/mo), etc.

It’s not only the fiat exits that ban specific users. Cryptocurrency exchanges are known to ban transactions to certain addresses / wallets for reasons including (but not limited to) fraud, scams, sanctions. I imagine some of the exchanges that try to follow US law also do some basic due diligence and ban some addresses based on sex work. If the sex worker’s customers can’t easily transfer the crypto to their addresses, the same problem remains.

acdha3• 3 years ago

Just because you find something inconvenient for marketing purpose doesn’t mean it’s propaganda. These are real people hitting exactly the problems cryptocurrency sales guys said they could avoid by using it, and they deserve the respect of not having their lived experience dismissed outright.

If you want to help cryptocurrency, put your time into fixing the problems rstger than still more empty marketing.

Justsignedup3• 3 years ago

"crypto will bring freedom from oppressive financial systems"

< "crypto has the same problems"

"propaganda"

LOL.

I have yet to see a real world use case for crypto that isn't about getting around legal restrictions in the financial space which usually are used to fund north Korea or a drug cartel.

netheril96• 3 years ago

There are also exchanges where you trade against other people between crypocurrencies and fiat. Chinese people all use this. These workers could use those.

CMCDragonkai• 3 years ago

They are like fiat-crypto dexes. How's your experiences with these?

psychphysic• 3 years ago

There's no good reason not to have your own wallet these days.

Even mobile wallets support lightening network (like Muun).

Bitrefill is handy for getting the off gift card.

sBqQu3U0wH2• 3 years ago

No sympathy from me, (not) sorry.

solumunus• 3 years ago

Weird hateful energy.

armitron• 3 years ago

Porn is a scourge to society and I'm perfectly OK with pornographers being shunned. They're little more than addictive drug peddlers.

jazzkingrt• 3 years ago

From guidelines:

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

sBqQu3U0wH2• 3 years ago

Oh wow, I don't care.

sesuximo• 3 years ago

Someone should make a wallet app that advertises to these people directly. (And you know… actually lets them stay on the platform.)

effingwewt• 3 years ago

I've had several sex worker friends who all chose to do it, save one. She was a real sweetheart but (and she knew this, and was candid about it), wasn't very bright.

The backpage/kijiji thing hurt her bad. She had to start going off referrals more. Which is a bad thing because, as I learned- forming close relationships with clients is bad in that line of business.

Soon she was getting passed around by friends, treated worse and worse. She got pregnant, engaged several times. Beat up several times, pregnant again.

I tried to convince her that anything would be better- fast food, whatever. But how to support now two kids by herself on minimum wage?

Even though I no longer personally know anyone (to my knowledge) effected by this- we need to protect sex workers. Legalize it, or at least decriminalize it to remove the stigma. Like the war on drugs it hurts the wrong people, and if there wasn't a market for it, it wouldn't be one of if not the oldest profession.

Sex Workers Took Refuge in Crypto. Now It’s Failing Them

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