Violet Rollergirl’s cryptocurrency FAQ for providers

I hear some questions from providers new to using cryptocurrency many times. This page offers succinct answers, with links to more details for those who need it.

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is electronic cash; cryptographic currency. Cryptography is a discipline that applies the rules of mathematics onto information, and cryptocurrency applies cryptography to systems of money.

This means anything you can do with money can be done with cryptocurrency, no more and no less.

If you are already familiar with the way physical cash works, then you know enough to start using cryptocurrency as you would physical cash. Likewise, if you already know how bank accounts work, then you know enough about cryptocurrency to start using it the way you might use a bank.

Why is cryptocurrency better for sex workers than payment apps, credit cards, or bank accounts?

Using cryptocurrency correctly gives you the benefits, conveniences, and rewards of electronic transactions while also keeping the same safety, privacy, and financial protections of using physical cash. That’s why cryptocurrency can be such a powerful tool for your business and livelihood when you get good with it as a worker in this industry.

If you’re a veteran sex worker, you probably have a healthy skepticism about the motivations of banks and other institutions that hold on to your money for you. If you’re newer, you may have heard stories from others who have experiened financial discrimination or been outright debanked. Perhaps this is why you currently prefer dealing with physical cash.

Cryptocurrency is rare in that it can literally be the best of both physical and electronic finance.

Isn’t cryptocurrency a scam?

No. Cryptocurrency is cryptography applied to money. Therefore, cryptocurrency is no more a scam than any other form of currency is. (Isn’t all money kind of a mass delusion, anyway?)

Certainly, fraud is plentiful, including in financial realms that have nothing to do with cryptocurrency. You can and probably will encounter many different scammers attempting to defraud you out of your valuables, whether that be your money, time, or extortable information. That does not make cryptocurrency itself a scam.

This page, along with the rest of my resource guides, is my attempt to ensure you know enough about cryptocurrency to avoid scams and to constrain yourself to the cryptocurrency technologies, apps, and services that are reputable and secure.

What’s this I hear about crypto being volatile?

When people discuss the price of a token or coin rising or falling quickly, they’re talking about volatility.

All currencies, assets, kinds of property, and other valuables are at least somewhat volatile relative to one another. You can compare the price of the Euro against that of the US Dollar on any given day and find that their value in relation to one another change constantly. This is also true of cryptocurrencies.

There are times when the value of a certain currency (crypto or otherwise) may change very fast. This happens to government-backed money when there is political strife, and it happens to cryptocurrency when market conditions change. This is not something unique to crypto nor is it something you are immune from by simply holding onto large sums of paper money.

Moreover, as cryptocurrency is merely a form of money, you can absolutely make “bets” on whether a certain cryptocurrency asset (often called a “token”) will rise or fall, treating it like a casino or stock market. But there are also many ways for you to use cryptocurrency that don’t engage in this kind of activity.

Three good ways to avoid wild price volatility are:

Spend what you earn as soon as you earn it.
Exchange the more volatile currency for a different one currently experiencing a slower rate of change in its price.
Keep your money in a so-called “stable” currency, which simply means a currency whose monetary policy pegs its value to the value of something else you care about, such as the US Dollar (like the USDC or USDT cryptocurrencies), or the price of gold metals (like the PAXG cryptocurrency), although this comes with numerous other risks.

Why are there so many cryptocurrencies?

For the same reason there are so many non-crypto currencies: people have different beliefs and allegiances.

In practice, though, most people simply use two currencies: a local one, and an international denominator. The local currency may be something like a Peso, Rupee, or Yen. The international or “reference” currency is more formally known as a “world reserve currency,” and is typically one controlled by more “powerful” influences, such as the US Dollar or the Euro.

The same is true with cryptocurrency. Most people will use the famous, well-known ones, such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH), but often have another “local” cryptocurrenccy that they favor for some reason or another.

Which currency do you use?

I believe strongly in and often advocate for Zcash (ZEC) because it has all of the technical and financial characteristics that a good, safe currency needs. It also has some additional affordances that make it ideal for sex workers.

On a technical level, Zcash is the cryptocurrency whose technical ecosystem most strongly protects individual privacy. When used with its flagship wallet app, Zodl, you can think of Zcash in Zodl the same as you might think of your chats in Signal Private Messenger. Private by default, easy to use, and increasingly widely adopted.

I also regularly use other cryptocurrencies, but I do so cautiously, since only Zcash protects my privacy sufficiently to be safe to use for the purposes of sex work.

Read two kinds of cryptocurrencies (private and not private) to learn more.

Motivations

Alternatively titled, “why would I want to use cryptocurrency when cash works just fine?”

I work in person, so do I really need electronic money at all?

I also do the majority of my sex work in person, but I still found cryptocurrency useful for various parts of my business.

Accepting deposits without needing to do cash meets. In fact, this was the forcing function that finally made me take cryptocurrency seriously.
Accepting tips and donations from anonymous admirers in untracable ways.
Offering clients superior payment discretion when they are nervous about line items on financial statements or receipts.
Making in-session extensions easy, avoiding the need for an ATM visit for guys who didn’t bring enough cash.
Accepting larger sums of money in single transactions where permissioned networks would require multiple smaller sends.
Accepting payments or gifts from international senders.
Actually spending my money even at businesses that don’t accept cash.

You don’t need to use cryptocurrency for every part of your business, although you certainly can. Many people start by using cryptocurrency to receive deposits, but then require the rest of a consideration be paid in cash. How you run your business is up to you. Crypto is just another tool for your toolbox.

Meanwhile, for online creators or e-commerce vendors, artists, and anyone else who wants to accept money without needing a payment processor’s or a government’s permission to do so, cryptocurrency is de rigueur.

Can I really put an end to chargebacks if I use crypto?

As cryptocurrency is a push-only financial system (i.e., buyers must pro-actively give funds to sellers, instead of sellers being allowed to take funds out of a buyer’s accounts), chargebacks are not technically possible for a buyer to initiate against a seller. Any and all refunds must be proactively confirmed by the seller before funds can be returned to a disgruntled or regretful buyer.

So, yes. However, you must be aware of these two important caveats:

you must use a true cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin or Zcash, not a “stablecoin” such as USDC or USDT.
you must use a self-custodial wallet app like Zodl or Cake Wallet, not a mainstream exchange platform such as Coinbase or CashApp.

Read my cryptocurrency primer for sex workers to learn more.

I don’t really need to keep my finances private, do I?

I think you do. Consider:

FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is a US government agency that offers over 25,000 federal, state, and local agencies including police departments warrantless search capabilities for every single electronic financial transaction ever made. There is no digital purchase you can ever make with your bank, wire, payment card, or payment app (like PayPal or Venmo) that is not seen by this agency. Read my guest post at the Ludlow Institute’s media arm, NBTV, to learn more.
The Department of Homeland Security has a secretive “predictive policing” unit that uses financial transactions as pretexts for making arrests.
According to the latest Free Speech Coalition report on Financial Discrimination, nearly 2 out of 3 adult industry workers (63%) have experienced financial discrimination. For almost half of these workers, 40%, have had a bank account closed, an experience we call debanking. This notably includes legal adult industry workers, such as OnlyFans models.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that the two most common ways fellow sex workers hear about me and my consulting services is:
- after their CashApp or other financial services app bans them.
- after a client begins stalking them when a traditional electronic financial transaction leaks their civilian identity to said client.

Why wait to take advantage of the benefits cryptocurrency offers until after this happens to you, too?

Apps (wallets)

Cryptocurrency is not physical, but digital. This means you need a digital tool in order to handle it.

Why do I need a wallet?

A wallet (app) makes it possible for you to use digital money. Without a wallet app installed on one of your personal devices, you cannot receive or send cryptocurrency.

Any app that lets you interact with cryptocurrency is also a wallet app. Unlike a physical wallet where you can stick any denomation of paper money into its pouch, a cryptocurrency wallet app must explicitly support the kind of cryptocurrency you want to use.

Although every app that supports cryptocurrency calls itself a “wallet,” most of the more mainstream apps are actually tiny ATMs or bank teller windows on your phone, not true wallets.

Take CashApp, for example. If you have CashApp on your phone, what you’ve installed is the CashApp ATM app. Even though it calls itself a “wallet,” in reality the money in your CashApp account is stored in CashApp’s vaults, not on your phone the way it would be with a true wallet app.

Read self-custody or bust to learn more.

Which wallet should I use?

At a minimum, you should install Zodl. You will probably also want to install Cake Wallet once you are comfortable with Zodl.

Read cryptocurrency wallet apps for sex workers to learn why.

Getting cryptocurrency

There are only three ways to get cryptocurrency:

you are gifted some from someone else who already has it.
you buy it with other money that you already have.
someone else buys something from you and pays you in it.

How do I receive cryptocurrency when someone wants to send me some?

Every wallet app has at least one “receive” or “deposit” button. If the wallet app supports many different kinds of cryptocurrencies, you might see many such buttons, one for each type of currency the wallet can receive. When you tap or press on this button, you will be shown two things:

your wallet’s address
the name of the network on which that address is reachable

Simply share this address along with the name of the network the address is for with the person who wants to send you crypto. Read my complementary client guide, Paying Your Provider, to learn what it’s like from the buyer’s perspective.

The address is like an account number (for a bank account), or a username (like a CashApp $cashtag). The crypto network, or “chain,” is like a payment processor (like Visa, MasterCard, or Discover).

The person you shared your address with can now use this address to send you money directly. Read receiving the same cryptocurrency being sent for more.

If the buyer does not already have the same kind of currency you are requesting, they will need to exchange what they do have for some of what you are expecting to receive from them. Instead of making them do this, you can prepare a conversion like this on their behalf so that they can just send what they already have. This technique is called a swap deposit.

Where should I buy cryptocurrency from?

It doesn’t really matter.

If you’re buying crypto from an online service, anywhere you can buy crypto is largely the same as anywhere else you can buy crypto. All of the places you can buy cryptocurrency are called exchanges, because they exchange one kind of currency (like US Dollars) with another (like Bitcoin or Zcash). This process, in which non-crypto currency is exchanged for cryptocurrency, is also called “on-ramping.”

You will find that there are restrictions on which exchanges will serve you based on things like where you live, what accounts you have already had blocked, banned, or suspended (if any), your citizenship status, and more. I maintain a list of cryptocurrency exchanges where I suggest clients buy cryptocurrency, and you can safely use the same exchanges so long as you use an account associated with your civilian identity and keep a strict separation between it and any sex work use for those funds.

Once you buy some cryptocurrency, the most important thing to do is to send it out of the exchange and into a true wallet app, such as Zodl or Cake Wallet.

How do I get a client to pay me in crypto?

If your client is already familiar with crypto, just ask them to pay that way. Many clients simply never think to pay you in crypto because they assume you don’t know anything about it, even though they do.

Consider also that it’s easier to start getting paid in crypto if you advertise that you accept crypto deposits and/or payments (you attract what you project), so make it easy for those clients to find you. I maintain lists of providers who publicize their acceptance of crypto deposits on my site and on my Bluesky. Feel free to ask to be added, but be sure to read my lax inclusion criteria!

If you need to convince a client to pay you in crypto for the first time, you’ll have to do more. Here are some suggestions to make it easier for those clients to at least try:

Avoid mentioning crypto altogether. Use the CashApp USDC → swap deposit method if you can, and treat your deposit address like a one-time use CashApp $cashtag. (This is the easiest way for most clients to pay in crypto.)
Write a short page on your site with step-by-step instructions that you can link to, like Bianca Stone’s excellent crypto explainer.
Highlight the benefits in terms of increased discretion (privacy), lower costs (transaction/processing fees), and cross-app interoperability (the client can use any app they want even if you were banned from that same app).
Fallback to gift cards from sites like Bitrefill (referral link) to offer an alternative that nevertheless exposes them to crypto’s massive and growing ecosystem, one step at a time.

Read convincing clients to pay in crypto for more of my advice.

Can I accept crypto payments for my online content?

Yes. There are two ways to do this. Which one you should use depends on how you make the sale.

If you are selling interactively, i.e., you are communicating with your buyer in real time such as via text, voice, or video chat, simply use your existing wallet app the same way you would to receive any other person-to-person payment.
If you are selling non-interactively, i.e., you have published a web store with products in a catalog such as with Shopify or WordPress WooCommerce and want or need your website to handle the checkout process for you, you’ll need to use cryptocurrency payment processors such as BTCPayServer or CipherPay.app.

Making payments

Spending cryptocurrency by exchanging it for goods, services, or other non-crypto currency is also called “off-ramping.”

What can I spend cryptocurrency on?

Theoretically, anything. In practice, to spend cryptocurrency directly you must find a vendor or merchant who accepts the cryptocurrency you have as a form of payment. Good news: there are more of them than you may think!

For example, Travala (referral link) offers hotel and airline bookings payable directly in crypto. Read use crypto-native service providers for more.

What if the seller doesn’t accept Zcash?

As with any purchase, you must offer the seller payment in a form they will accept.

Some apps, like Zodl, can act like a global cryptocurrency debit card because they provide easy ways for you to instantly convert the currency you have in them to many other kinds of currency on the fly. This Zodl wallet app feature is called Crosspay.

What if the seller I want to buy from doesn’t take any crypto?

If the vendor or merchant you want to buy from doesn’t accept cryptocurrency at all, you may have to first buy a gift card or load up a cryptocurrency-backed traditional payment card, such as a prepaid Visa or MasterCard. These options can be extremely convenient and extremely private, but they are always at least one more step than simply paying directly in crypto.

Have a peek at Bitrefill (referral link) to see the many thousands upon thousands of brands of gift cards that you can buy directly with cryptocurrency. Similarly, have a look at the crypto-backed debit cards I’m familiar with—the easiest one to use is called Kast (referral link)—if you’d like to use cryptocurrency in tap-to-pay transactions at retail stores or e-commerce stores that don’t (yet) accept crypto directly.

How do I pay for my ads with crypto?

In order to pay for an ad (or anything) with crypto, you must first have some. Assuming you have some, do this:

Place an order and make sure you choose a cryptocurrency you have or can swap into as your payment method.
Note the payment address or QR code from the website’s checkout flow.
Open your wallet app and tap the appropriate Send or Withdraw button for the currency you are paying in.
Paste the address or scan the QR code from the website’s checkout screen you noted earlier.
Confirm the details of your transaction, ensuring the currency, network, payment address, and payment amount are all correct.

Read how to pay for your Tryst ad for an example.

Have a question not yet answered here?

Get in touch with me directly to ask.

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