Playboy Enterprises is not new to the crypto world — more on that in a moment — but it still wants to expand its reach. To that end, the company is developing an online payment wallet that will support a number of cryptocurrencies across the company’s online media, digital and casual gaming businesses.
This, by any stretch of imagination, the sexy endeavor will kick off with Playboy.TV, which will be the first Playboy property to feature the new digital wallet that accepts Vice Industry Token (VIT) — among other leading cryptocurrencies — for access to the brand’s exclusive content. By integrating with VIT, visitors will be able to pay and earn tokens to view Playboy.TV’s original content, as well as comment on and vote for content.
“As the popularity of alternative payment methods continues to grow around the world, along with the reach of Playboy’s digital platforms, we felt it was important to give our 100 million monthly consumers increased payment flexibility,” Reena Patel, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Operations for Playboy Enterprises, said in a statement. “This innovation gives the millions of people who enjoy our content, as well as those in the future who participate in our casual gaming, AR and VR platforms, more choices with regard to payment and in the case of VIT, an opportunity to be rewarded for engaging with Playboy offerings.”
For those who haven’t heard of it, the Vice Industry Token is a decentralized blockchain platform and cryptographic token that rewards viewers just for watching content; it was launched earlier this year and has ended its crowdsale on March 20th.
The new digital wallet is expected to be available before the end of the year. Playboy also has plans to integrate cryptocurrency to its casual gaming, AR and VR initiatives in the future.
Playboy has been accepting Bitcoin payments since 2014
It was back in February 2014 when Playboy Plus, a Playboy-brand website, has started accepting Bitcoin payments. At that time, the company made its adult content as well as subscriptions of different duration available for purchase with the world’s first cryptocurrency.
To make this possible, Playboy used service from BitPay, enabling users to purchase one-month, six-month and lifetime memberships.
Playboy, of course, is not the only company in the adult content space to “go crypto.” MindGeek, which owns many such websites, did that as well as so did other companies in this “space.” Some of them, without naming names that could penalize us in Google, reported 10 percent increases in revenue; so yes – Playboy launching a crypto wallet of its own definitely makes sense…