In this audio interview, CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen and adult content creator Allie Awesome talk about payments and money in the sex industry, especially the trends impacted by the coronavirus crisis.
From how porn performers and entrepreneurs deal with Bitcoin Twitter to the ways the pandemic changed our digital sex lives, Cuen and Allie explore what actually drives demand for censorship-resistant systems.

The biggest problem? Allie and other performers and sex workers basically have their digital advertising and distribution platforms controlled by third parties that aren’t responsible to the workers.

For example, OnlyFans briefly froze Allie’s account earlier this year. Although she regained access, her distribution conduits remain at the mercy of tech platforms. This is where peer-to-peer transactions come in. Allie said she knows how to use a cryptocurrency wallet and would gladly do so if more customers wanted to pay her directly. The fact is, those customers are few and far between.

“To those people who want to come up with a solution, my first question is: Well, are you paying for porn?” she said. “I think a lot of people want to make money off of ‘adult’, but they aren’t really willing to invest in ‘adult.’”
Read more info: https://www.coindesk.com/how-the-porn-industry-changed-during-coronavirus-with-performers-wary-of-bitcoin

Bitcoin price searches for support in order to maintain the current uptrend
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) was unable to break through the resistance zone at $10,000 and corrected nearly 10% in a day. The drop down occurred on the same day that U.S. equity markets saw a substantial retracement.

These moves automatically made investors and traders fearful of further continuation of this correlation. However, is the fear that Bitcoin price will continue to drop if stocks correct further warranted, or was the BTC correction overdue after multiple rejections at $10,000?
Read more info: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-price-drop-to-key-9k-support-could-place-the-uptrend-in-peril

Takeshi Fujimaki, a former adviser to George Soros, said it was "not a surprise" to hear Paul Tudor Jones' bitcoin revelation.
When macro investor Paul Tudor Jones, or PTJ, confirmed he was investing in Bitcoin, it sparked an uptick for the whole crypto market. Many crypto traders welcomed his surprise move, noting it was a change of the tide in the traditional sector.

Speaking at Cointelegraph Japan's Traders Live on June 9th, Takeshi Fujimaki, a former adviser to George Soros, said it was "not a surprise" to hear Jones’ revelation, given the current state of central bank-driven monetary inflation.

Fujimaki is a former Japanese lawmaker and known as "Kuroda foe" for his criticism of Bank of Japan Governor, Haruhiko Kuroda. When he was a trader, he was in close contact with PTJ. Fujimaki revealed:
Read more info:  https://cointelegraph.com/news/paul-tudor-jones-bitcoin-investments-not-a-surprise-former-soros-adviser-says

2020 has been one of BTC’s most volatile periods, but why do cryptocurrency exchanges keep crashing under high demand?
Nobody can really predict Bitcoin’s (BTC) price volatility. But one thing is becoming painfully predictable when the price of Bitcoin suddenly lurches in one direction or another: One or more of the major cryptocurrency exchanges simply goes offline. This leaves users powerless to prevent losses from spiraling, as they are left unable to trade or buy more positions as a hedge.

These outages have happened time and time again. Most recently, as Bitcoin started climbing toward the $10,000 mark, Coinbase went offline. At the time it happened, Cointelegraph reported that this is the fourth time in the last three months that Coinbase has shut down during major moves in the price of BTC. Additionally, Twitter user CryptoWhale pointed out that there have been no fewer than 11 Coinbase outages over the last 12 months, each one coming at a time when Bitcoin’s price had moved more than $500 in value.
Source:  https://cointelegraph.com/news/blackout-cure-needed-btc-price-volatility-challenges-crypto-exchanges

Ethereum was created to carry out complex applications Bitcoin supposedly couldn’t handle. A new app brings the idea full circle.

Pseudonymous developer Fiatjaf has created Etleneum, which he describes as a “centralized” version of Ethereum that runs on payments from Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Hence the name, a portmanteau of “Ethereum” and “Lightning.” (If that’s too subtle, the Etleneum logo is a diamond shape like Ethereum’s with a lightning bolt running through it.)

Like Ethereum, Etleneum has “contracts,” automated agreements over what rules need to be met before money can be dispensed. The contracts are public like Ethereum’s, and like the world’s second-largest blockchain by market capitalization, Fiatjaf’s platform is open to anyone to use.

But it is not decentralized. Fiatjaf controls it all – as he is quick to note.

“Lots of people think I invented some kind of decentralized trustless smart contract platform on Lightning, which would be amazing and probably impossible, but then they’re frustrated when I deny it,” he said.

It sounds odd, since the whole point of Bitcoin and Ethereum is decentralization – wrestling control from one ruler or entity.

But Fiatjaf argues there are limits to what can be totally decentralized, and that this particular mixed set-up might prove to be more useful.
Read more info: https://www.coindesk.com/why-this-dev-built-a-centralized-ethereum-on-top-of-bitcoins-lightning-network

Slip of the finger? Masochist? It’s not yet known. But over the past two days, an unknown wallet holder has paid some $5.2 million in transaction fees for two ether transactions.

Just before 10:00 UTC Wednesday, an unknown wallet holder sent 0.55 ether (ETH) (around $133) with a 10,666 ETH transaction fee – currently worth just under $2.6 million.

The fee went to Chinese mining group Spark Pool, which processed the transaction and may distribute the millions to its members. A normal transaction fee would likely be up to $0.50 or so, but can be manually set higher by a sender if they want to push a transaction through more quickly.

Around 4:00 UTC Thursday, the same address sent out another 350 ether (ETH) with another 10,668 ETH – worth $2.6 million – in transaction fees. The block was mined by the Ethermine pool.

The identities of both the sender and receiver are not yet known. But the sender has an ETH wallet balance worth more than $11 million – even after spending $2.6 million in transaction fees. In comparison, the receiver’s wallet is now empty, with past funds transferred out to other wallets.
Read more info: https://www.coindesk.com/whale-sent-130-ether-transaction-fee

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin says recent high fees could be blackmail.
Multiple transactions recently incurred millions in transaction fees on the Etheruem network, which creator Vitalik Buterin thinks could have been blackmail.

"So the million-dollar txfees *may* actually be blackmail," Buterin said in a June 12 tweet.
Read more info: https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-comments-on-strange-transaction-fees

According to Exponential Investments crypto fund managers, Ether is digital tungsten to Bitcoin's gold.
Two crypto fund managers say Ether (ETH) is neither a worthy asset for investors nor a great store of value.

According to a report posted June 11 by Steven McClurg and Leah Wald of Exponential Investments, Ether is a “risk-on asset” and not a reliable investment as many in the crypto community believe.

The crypto fund managers liken ETH to “digital tungsten” rather than the digital gold which Bitcoin (BTC) has come to be known as in some circles, in that the token is not stable enough against future purchasing power:
Read more info: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-hedge-fund-managers-ether-more-like-digital-tungsten