What's Really Going on With OnlyFans and Payment Censorship

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The tyranny of payment processors as moral barometers strikes again. On Thursday, Axios revealed that OnlyFans was struggling to raise money from outside investors despite being on track to make more than a billion dollars this year. Later in the afternoon, OnlyFans announced it is eliminating sexually explicit content from its platform. The internet was agog, given that OnlyFans’s success is almost entirely based on sexually explicit content. In this episode, NLW explores the variety of things going on behind the scenes, connects the dots to Chase Bank’s shutdown of Compass Mining’s accounts and argues that payment processors shouldn’t be in charge of societal decisions about what free people are allowed to do. Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1438693620?at=1000lSDb Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/538vuul1PuorUDwgkC8JWF?si=ddSvD-HST2e_E7wgxcjtfQ Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ubHdjcnlwdG8ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M= Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW “The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Tidal Wave” by BRASKO. Image credit: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm not saying a priority that a society doesn't get to decide what is and isn't acceptable.
0:04.5	I'm saying that the place to make those decisions is not shadowy text messages from the enfranchised power structure.
0:10.3	And while maybe Bitcoin doesn't solve this straight up, at least not with a fair bit of organizational design around it,
0:15.1	I'm goddamn glad it exists so that there is at least a counterweight against the unfettered control of payments middlemen
0:21.1	to tell us what is and isn't acceptable in our own lives.
0:26.3	Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.
0:30.3	It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the Big Picture Power Shifts remaking our world.
0:37.5	The Breakdown is sponsored by Nidig and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.
0:43.9	What's going on, guys? It is Friday, August 20th, and there are times when the value of
0:50.0	cryptocurrencies must be explained in theoretical terms. As a bulwark or a hedge against undesirable
0:57.2	futures that might or might not come to pass. By their very nature, these arguments require
1:02.9	someone to imagine a theoretical future to really grok the value of this new technology.
1:08.7	On the other hand, there are sometimes that something happens in the
1:12.2	real world that shows clearly and forcefully the value of a cryptocurrency system outside
1:18.7	the purview of traditional actors here and now. This week has given us a couple examples of the
1:25.5	latter. The first comes from Compass Mining.
1:28.6	Briefly, if you don't know Compass Mining, they are a super cool company,
1:32.5	focused on increasing the decentralization of hash rate
1:35.3	by allowing everyone to participate in Bitcoin mining on terms that work for them.
1:40.5	Also cool is the story of how they came to be.
1:43.1	One of their founders, Thomas Heller, has deep roots
1:45.4	in global Bitcoin mining and a ton of experience. The other Witt Gibbs has frequently told the story
	...

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