Verge have been hyping the announcement of their new mystery partner for days, with the initial date pushed from yesterday to today, 17 April. After recent controversy over allegations of paid price pumping and issues with the Wraith Protocol, not everyone in the market reacted well to Verge asking for a crowdfund of 75 million XVG which amounted to about $3 million USD at the time in order to release the name of their new partner, leading to speculation that no such partner existed and that Verge were simply driving up the price of their coin with publicity and/or pull an exit scam.
“In line with our mission to empower people to bring blockchain transactions into everyday life, we are thrilled to announce efforts to establish the largest cryptocurrency collaboration to hit the market,” read the crowdfunding statement. “Help us accelerate this crowdfunding effort and reach our target goal.”
However, Verge came through this morning with the announcement that Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn site and the 36th most visited website on the internet, is the secret partner and will be accepting XVG payments for premium subscriptions. XVG is an anonymous privacy coin which, unlike credit card payments, won’t leave a record of the transaction.
Pornhub released a blog post and video about the new payment options, describing the move as “an important foray into the future.” The blog post is fully safe for work (SFW), while the video contains some sexually suggestive imagery.
“The future has come. In our efforts to keep current with our community’s privacy and payment preferences, Pornhub will now be accepting Verge as a means of payment for services like Pornhub Premium and more, on our platforms. Building on Verge’s core values of security, anonymity and practicality, the introduction of this cryptocurrency as a means of payment Pornhub signifies an important foray into the future from the industry that is always on the cutting edge of technology.”
Pornhub has further announced that the partnership will extend to partnered sites like Brazzers as well, where XVG will be accepted as payment for adult video games. Verge now say that the $3 million raised in exchange for the announcement will go towards Pornhub platform integration and Ledger integration. although the Ledger team have said no such integration is planned.
https://twitter.com/fdevillamil/status/985057343707676674
The price of Verge reached $0.10 over the past week, but has dropped to $0.07 at the time of writing, directly after the announcement. It’s possible that overhyping and falsely suggesting that Token Pay were the new partner has lead to heightened expectations within the community.
With an imperfect track record including a recent 51% system attack, many are questioning Pornhubs choice of crypto while applauding the adoption as a whole.
Featured image from Shutterstock.