Tag: freedom

  • How Crypto Empowered Porn Creators In 2021: Less Cant More Freedom

    How Crypto Empowered Porn Creators In 2021: Less Cant More Freedom

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    The crypto industry saw the opportunity of a lifetime this year when OnlyFans, a platform known mostly for its adult content, announced it would ban sexually explicit content. The crypto and porn industry together represents a very profitable merge that has just started to happen.

    The world of payment methods has a history of hypocrisy, control, and morals, and it tends to not support anything related to sex work.

    Reportedly, earlier in the year OnlyFans had decided to shut down all sexually explicit content because of pressure from banks and payment processors. There was a huge backlash and the ban stopped days after its announcement, alleging that the platform had “secured assurances necessary” from the banks.

    The platform’s founder and chief executive told Time that banks were refusing to process adult content-related payments.

    “OnlyFans stands for inclusion”, they said, but they had been trying to distance themselves from the porn industry, interested in launching a streaming service –which doesn’t allow adult content.

    Payment methods have been a burden for porn creators worldwide for years. Their gains are often subject to frozen funds, huge losses, and since there’s not much protection and support offered for sex workers, they need to be extra careful to not become subject to scams and other dangers.

    So anonymity and safe digital wallets go really well with this industry. Naturally, many creators and producers have started to see an answer in crypto.

    Crypto’s Not The Only One With A Bad Reputation

    Cristobal Medoza producer and co-creator of a top Argentinian porn channel called ‘My Bad Reputation’ was one of many to adopt crypto in order to find financial stability and more opportunities. He gave us inside comments on his personal experience, allowing us to take a peek at the industry people love to consume from but try not to support.

    New platforms are surging that connect the porn and crypto industry. A great niche for all parties if successful –it needs to be simple, safe, and well-executed–.

    It’s a demystification that goes both ways: the amount of porn consumers is very high. If adult content platforms are related to crypto, this might become a blasting cap of mainstream adoption.

    Medonza explained that the major porn platforms have already adopted crypto (paying in Bitcoin and USDT), which contrasts with other payment services offered that are very restrictive and using them comes with too many complications and downsides.

    However, many smaller adult content platforms don’t use crypto yet, and that becomes a major problem that comes with huge fees to convert the creators’ money to digital assets.

    Mendoza added that porn creators are often affected by the banks, which he claims have closed the accounts of many and frozen their funds when finding out their income is related to adult content.

    He commented on the OnlyFans sketchy days of adult content baning, alleging that a large of new pornography platforms started to appear, trying to take that big chunk of a very profitable market.

    There’s always going to be someone that will take a stake at that market because it generates huge gains. At the end, OnlyFans took a step back because they knew they would loose too much money and others would quickly fill into their role.

    Mendoza stated that his adult content channel takes its payments through Binance, and it has become a great option since “it doesn’t question where the incomes come from, there are no types or morality issues with how we make the money,” plus they can easily exchange it.

    Further than using crypto as a better payment method, it has also allowed him and his co-creator to make a few investments through trading and hodling.

    There’s many people from the industry that still don’t know how to use crypto as a tool for payments and administration.

    I think [they] would greatly benefit from crypto … comissions are low, there’s full control over one’s own income.

    He mentioned there are many new projects that claim to link the adult content industry with crypto but some are scams, and creators need to be wary and start to educate themselves about cyber security.

    Crypto
    Crypto total market cap at $2,1 trillion in the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com



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  • Advancing economic freedom for our veterans and service members

    Advancing economic freedom for our veterans and service members

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    By Philip Martin, Chief Security Officer

    This Veterans Day, we’re committing to investing in our extraordinary veterans and service members. Our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world, and our work has always been driven by the fact that we believe we can help to build a more fair and equitable financial system for everyone.

    As a veteran myself, I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of service. I’ve also seen how difficult it can be for some veterans to be afforded the opportunities to translate their incredible skills learned in service to the business world. To harness that potential and recognize the vital and unique talents of our veterans, we are partnering with the following organizations: Bunker Labs, The COMMIT Foundation and Shift. Our partnerships will focus on two core areas:

    1. Committing $200,000 to each partner organization to support their mission to advance economic opportunities for service members, veterans, and their families
    2. Dedicating an additional $1 million for a new fund to create unique incentives for veterans and service members to learn more and participate in the cryptoeconomy. This will include bespoke training, networking, and career development opportunities

    Alex Krongard, CEO, The COMMIT Foundation: “On this Veterans Day, I am truly grateful and humbled by Coinbase’s amazing contribution towards helping our service members and their families transition into meaningful and purpose-filled post-service lives. Their sense of service and commitment to their communities and our nation is of incalculable value and needed now more than ever. Again, my sincere thanks and a promise that the COMMIT team will continue to do our utmost in support of our veterans.”

    Mike Slagh, Founder & CEO, Shift: “Shift is over the moon to partner with Coinbase to create new educational and career advancement opportunities within crypto and blockchain technologies for the military community. Our veterans represent one of our nation’s most resilient and diverse workforces, and our community’s passion for learning gives me belief that veterans have an important role to play in the modern workforce. The dedicated members of the Coinbase team have graciously volunteered their time to support our community since our company’s founding days, and I’m so grateful to begin to scale the impact that veterans and military supporters at Coinbase are already creating with military members, past and present.”

    Blake Hogan, CEO, Bunker Labs: “With the commitment and financial support of companies like Coinbase, veteran entrepreneurs across our great country will have access to the professional networks and educational resources they need and deserve, to take on the challenge of starting a business. We are excited and grateful to partner with Coinbase and thank them for their support.”

    Moving forward, we will continue to develop additional programming to support veterans and service members. That includes contributing to these existing partnerships while also recognizing the unique skills and attributes of our veterans as we build a championship team at Coinbase. To that end, we also look forward to adding more talented veterans and service members as we continue to grow.


    Advancing economic freedom for our veterans and service members was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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  • How crypto enables economic freedom

    How crypto enables economic freedom

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    The following is an internal memo that I shared with Coinbase employees this week and would also like to share publicly to help people see how we’re working toward our mission of increasing economic freedom in the world.

    Tl;dr: Our core thesis is that greater adoption and usage of cryptocurrency will increase economic freedom in the world, because crypto solves many of the shortcomings of the current financial system that hinder economic freedom.

    Team,

    Every quarter at our company All Hands, we review our Mission (what we’re trying to achieve) and our Strategy (how we’re going to get there). One question I often hear from employees is: “How does cryptocurrency create more economic freedom in the world?” This is a great question, so I wanted to share my thoughts with all of you.

    First, a refresher: Economic freedom is a composite measure of 12 factors. It quantifies the rights of people to control their own labor and property in each country and globally. Economic freedom varies dramatically across the world, and while our economy is increasingly global, the government of any single country has significant control over the financial and economic freedoms of its people. Low economic freedom in a given country isn’t always due to malicious activity (e.g, fraud, oppression, etc) — it’s often due to mismanagement (poor monetary and fiscal policy) or simply bad infrastructure.

    Crypto and economic freedom

    The question to ask is: How can we build a global economy where anyone with an internet connection can participate, where property rights are enforced, and where money preserves its value? Crypto is the solution. Crypto can’t directly improve every facet of economic freedom (e.g., tax policies and government spending), but it can improve most of the underlying drivers (see below).

    Read more about each of the factors here.

    Why is crypto so uniquely positioned to increase economic freedom? Because it has these inherent properties:

    Crypto is an open, global network

    Crypto networks are open, removing the barriers of borders. It allows every person in the world to transact on shared networks, in the same way they communicate on a shared network (the internet). More importantly these networks themselves are not controlled by governments that can use their monetary systems to hinder economic freedom (and prosperity). This design principle leads to more open markets and increases trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, and monetary freedom.

    Crypto enforces property rights

    Property rights allow people to save their income, grow their wealth, and plan for the long term because they know the fruits of their labor are safe from unfair seizure or theft. Before crypto, your confidence in property rights was a function of the trust you had in your government and its respect for the rule of law. With crypto, anyone can acquire and grow their wealth without intervention from trusted 3rd parties like a government or a bank, or fear that their wealth could easily be seized. Property rights are also about the ability to enter contractual agreements. In some areas around the world, a contract has little value, because you can’t be confident in its enforcement. Smart contracts move enforcement from the courts to the blockchain, enabling gains from specialization and commercial exchange.

    Crypto is unbiased

    Crypto networks are often pseudonymous (or even anonymous). They don’t care where you live, what your race or gender is, or who you voted for in the last election. Unlike the current financial system they are inherently open and unbiased. Anyone with an internet connection can create a wallet, get paid in crypto, spend in crypto and accrue wealth in crypto. Service providers like Coinbase do have compliance programs as required by law, but we don’t control access to all crypto and we don’t own the network. Anyone can access crypto networks through other providers if we make a bad decision, or are forced into bad regulation. In addition, self custody wallets like Coinbase Wallet provide an ever greater degree of freedom when it comes to financial inclusion.

    Crypto enables mobility

    As I mentioned above, there are important components of economic freedom that cryptocurrency can’t directly benefit (e.g., government integrity, tax policies, fiscal health, etc.). However, cryptocurrency does provide the conditions for mobility by reducing switching costs, allowing people to both accrue wealth and bring it across borders. Cryptocurrency is the ultimate embodiment of the power of the individual, by significantly reducing the barriers to emigration / exit, and thus increasing economic freedom.

    Conclusion

    As you can see, cryptocurrency can impact many of the factors that lead to more economic freedom. It can both help build better-functioning economies in countries with less economic freedom, and make it easier to emigrate to a better life. This is why our core thesis as a company is that greater adoption and usage of cryptocurrency will increase economic freedom in the world.

    Technology is the longest lever we can pull to improve the human condition. At its core, cryptocurrency is a technology breakthrough that allows us to build a more free and open financial system that enables the rights of people to control their own labor and property. It is the best tool that exists to advance our mission of increasing economic freedom in the world.

    What does this mean for Coinbase? Crypto is in many ways still nascent. It’s still hard to use, crypto networks are plagued with scaling challenges, and the economy built on top of crypto infrastructure is in its early days. Our strategy and roadmap is geared towards solving these challenges: We’re focused on building easy-to-use products that abstract away the complexity of blockchains, and we’re building the primitives of a functioning financial system. We still have a long way to go, but the future is bright.


    How crypto enables economic freedom was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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