Accepting Cryptos for Affiliate Payments

With current Doge Coin and continuing Crypto craze, I’m wondering if it would be interesting for some affiliates to get paid in Crypto currency? I’ll admit I’m quite new to the crypto space and am just starting to buy and sell currencies now. It seems like paying affiliates in crypto currencies through a platform like CoinBase could be a way to help everyone save on bank fees, especially with international transfers. Do you think anyone would be interested in this? Does anyone on here currently work in the Crypto space and are there any known limitations with porn? Thanks for any feedback on the topic!

It would be interesting however the problem is declaring them for accounting purposes and plus being able to open an business account that can hold them rather than a offline wallet.

I have invested heavily in Bitcoin and Ether a while back but done so through ETF which makes it a lot easier than having to store it yourself and it’s just like any other tracker so its value can be declared in my own currency.

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Its something we have looked at Danny, one issue I forsee is actually I don’t know if the fees would be all that much lower for most cryptos, Sending about £100 ETH from one wallet to another cost my over £38 last week, but it seems to jump around all the time how much it costs to move it.

Although some of the “cheaper” currencies could be interesting Such as bitcoin cash (BCH) or Litecoin… I fins bitcoin is too volatile and mining fees too erratic to be a stable form of payment for affiliates currently.

Although I like you am looking at it from the Sponsors point of View, from an affiliate point of view it could be a different opinion.

And from an accounting front, I am with Bjorn… its a headache I don’t want to consider (especially with EU accounting laws… not sure if its the same in the US)

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Great points and I didn’t even consider the Accounting aspect, that would indeed make things more difficult and the Accounting would be a nightmare in the US too. We are working on implementing Crypto payments on our sites now so I thought since we’ll have those currencies coming in anyways it could be a way to use those currencies rather than immediately transferring them to USD. But I’m still not sure if many will pay for porn with the cryptos since most people just seem to use it for Investing these days. I have read Doge Coin in particular is trying to make it so that is a currency people actually use, but we’ll see if that happens. I’ve long thought the crypto currencies seem to be made for porn sites with their anonymous nature, surfers would be a lot more willing to pay for porn. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I think it’s definitely here to stay but the volatility is too high at the moment.

we’ve looked into this and it is a nightmare. If you ‘use’ the crypto the IRS considers it the same as cashing it out to Fiat. if you swap one crypto for another, the IRS considers it the same as cashing out to Fiat. On top of that, if you accept payment in crypto, you have to declare it as normal income, and then when you exchange it, you have to to declare it again for capital gains purposes, so you have to store the date, time and amount of the transaction, as well as the market price of that crypto at that time.
we will be adding them as a payment option for membership, but for affiliates Nats will take into account the USD value of the transaction and pay out accoringly in USD

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Crypto seems dodgy to me – and it dumps a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

The whole carbon narrative is out of proportion. Banking, Gold Mining etc contributes far more to global warming and carbon in the atmosphere than crypto does. Crypto being bad for the environment is a narrative pushed by those who are afraid of what it can do such as banks.

But the issue with volatility is real and a problem, however that will probably level out eventually. Crypto is here to stay and will replace traditional currency eventually.

DeFi alone has revolutionized the playing field for small investors and is growing at a fast pace. Traditional banking will hopefully be a thing of the past. Why would I put my hard earned cash with a bank that gives near 0% interest when I can put it into DeFi and earn 6-12% interest plus any gains it does in value? DeFi allows me easily to lend money to others so it just doesn’t sit around doing nothing while helping drive innovation to those who need to lend.

For example, if you’ve a developer of a app or web site a normal bank won’t lend to you since you have no proof of real value, such a developer can instead turn to DeFi and borrow funds from others who have it available.

You also have to remember that we’re heading into times with massive inflation, your money will become worth less and less due to extreme money printing and monetary policy. You just can’t keep printing money without inflation. Crypto has potential to counteract inflation.

The carbon footprint is not a "narrative’; it’s a real concern based on measureable data. Better to deal with it now than wait for the industry to multiply a thousand fold (traditional banking and mining are at peak, crypto is in its infancy).

Right, but it’s not based on facts. Majority of energy used for bitcoin mining is renewable energy. I assume you’re basing it on Musk’s little tweet. It’s not all as it seems with that though.

While I agree that for bitcoin its questionable at best that its “Green” or “Not Green”, I think there is a narrative both for again against its energy usage (especially where china has been concerned as coal is so cheap there it is effectively cheaper than green energy)… That does not make all cryptos bad for the environment, infact crytos such as Algorand being one but to name a few that is actually pledged to be carbon negative, (source) and due to it using proof of stake rather than proof of work as a confirmation method, uses tiny fractions of the energy of say Ethereum or Bitcoin even without their pledge and offsetting of carbon usage.

I am environmentally conscious in my investments generally, although I would make a point that if you wanted to identify an industry that is inherently “carbon positive”, and does not really have its carbon footprint regulated… you wont find much worse than porn itself. The amounts of flights, server hours, streaming hours, and the fact our traffic comes from social media and search engines (huge energy consumers) ect ect ect makes for an industry that is not exactly leading the way towards saving the planet… Although that’s a discussion for another day.

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