Sex Workers Turn to Crypto Amid Stricter Industry Regulations

For many sex workers, bitcoin is a way for them to reclaim their financial independence and it is almost turning into an industry standard.

The US passed a federal law designed to eliminate online sex trafficking in 2018. The Fight Online Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or FOSTA – SESTA, meant that the owners of web sites could face criminal charges for content that promoted trafficking.

This law was one of the reasons for the demise of Backpage, once the bastion of online ads for sex workers.

Unfortunately, this law did not have the desired effect as it only drove the trade further underground and many sex workers resorted to working on the streets.

Crypto allows sex workers do deal with the issue of chargebacks, in which a transaction is reversed when a customer claims they have been fraudulently charged for a good or service they did not receive. Most of the time, the workers themselves are responsible for paying the money back.

Although these claims are not always true, but crypto offers a way around this as all crypto transactions are final, rendering chargebacks impossible.

Crypto also offers sex workers the opportunity to move away from payment processors who can block their accounts at any time. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal are guilty of this and have blocked sex worker’s accounts.

These companies almost always state that this was done because rules prohibit them from being involved in “illegal and brand-damaging activities.” One of the only barriers to crypto adoption in the sex work industry is the lack in crypto knowledge. Sex workers have written and circulated guides online on how to use crypto, but there is still a rather sizable knowledge gap.