[Music] This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Andrew Rivera of Confirmo. [Music] I’d like to invite you to check out one of our projects that we’re very proud of, thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles on age verification laws and more on the industry’s plight in the war on porn and the numerous attacks on us. Go to thewaronporn.com and check it out. Adult Site Broker has launched a new website at adultsidebroker.com. The attractive new site is easier to navigate and now includes this podcast inside of it. Check it out at adultsidebroker.com. Finally, just a reminder, we’re always looking for buyers and sellers of adult sites. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about either selling your site or buying one. Always feel free to contact me at adultsidebroker.com with any questions you may have. Now let’s feature our property of the week that’s for sale at adultsidebroker. We’re proud to offer a growing free porn gaming site with adult sex games. The site is owned by one of the top entrepreneurs in our industry. This niche site is designed with a streamlined, user-friendly HTML structure that speeds up load times. What makes this site unique is its hands-free operation. It runs on autopilot, so no daily management is required, making it ideal for someone who wants a passive, reliable revenue stream. The only ongoing effort involves uploading new games, which takes no more than 10 to 15 hours per month to add hundreds of titles ensuring a continuous stream of fresh content. The site is perfect for someone looking to enter or expand in the adult gaming space. The total number of adult games live to date is 3,397. 93% of the traffic is direct or organic. There’s an extensive network of high-authority backlinks built over several years. Many of these links come from permanent guest posts on respected, high-authority domains, offering sustainable SEO strength that requires no ongoing maintenance costs. This strategic backlink portfolio boosts search engine ranking and organic traffic that newer sites can’t match. Only $1.2 million. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Andrew Rivera of Confirmo. Andrew, thanks for being with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Hey, thank you so much for having me on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m thrilled to be here and to talk about crypto in the adult industry. Sounds good. Now let’s tell everybody about you. Andrew is an account executive at Confirmo, a leading crypto payment gateway, specializing in helping businesses integrate crypto and stablecoin payments and expand crypto adoption. Andrew has a background in fintech and is passionate about driving innovation in digital payments, particularly in industries that face challenges with traditional banking solutions such as adult. Confirmo is a trusted cryptocurrency payment gateway providing seamless and secure payment processing for businesses worldwide. They enable companies in high-risk industries, including the adult sector, to accept crypto payments without the limitations of traditional banking. With fast settlements, low fees, and built-in volatility protection, Confirmo offers a reliable alternative for businesses looking to expand their payment options and reduce chargeback risks. So Andrew, why don’t you give us a brief introduction to Confirmo and what your company does. Thank you for the comprehensive description. That was brilliant. So to put it simply, as you mentioned, Confirmo is a cryptocurrency payment gateway. So we make it super easy for businesses such as those in the adult industry to accept crypto payments. We’ve handled all the technical aspects to make it as easy as possible. You can think of us as the bridge between your business and the world of digital currencies. So we’ve streamlined the process to eliminate all the headaches for people who don’t have a degree in computer science. Like me. So talk a little bit more. How does Confirmo do what you do exactly what you do? So we provide a simple but robust payment gateway. Businesses can integrate our API, or they can easily create payment buttons to put directly on their websites, or they can send invoices via email. And this requires no technical interactions whatsoever. You can do it in a minute flat. We handle all the transactions, the conversions, and the settlements so businesses can focus on what they do best, creating content and satisfying their customers. Okay. So let’s talk about the adult industry. How does Confirmo help businesses and adult accept cryptocurrency payments? In the adult industry, Confirmo offers several key advantages. The first would be privacy. Many users appreciate the anonymity that crypto can divide. And it’s sort of a misconception that there is a complete level of anonymity associated with cryptocurrencies. That’s simply not the case. It is possible for people to go in and to monitor these transactions. However, at the surface, as far as your banking partner is concerned, there is a level of anonymity that’s satisfactory for our partners in the adult industry. That’s something that they really value. The second would be the reduced fees. Obviously, that’s a big one. Compared to traditional payment processors, crypto transactions often come with drastically lower fees, less than 1%. Now, across the board, the entire industry has been grossly subjected to inflated fees. And we at Confirmo don’t really see any reason to discriminate. So we offer the adult industry the same rates as we would any other industry. And I think the final thing that really appeals is that crypto knows no borders. So it’s easier to transact with customers globally. And in addition, like you mentioned, the chargeback issue, we’ve completely eliminated it. So that right there is a major pain point relief. Sure. Okay. So any other reasons why crypto would be an ideal payment method for adult? Crypto comes with less inertia. There’s fewer intermediaries. So independent creators, studios are able to make use of it to immediately send transactions, send transactions in real time for a fraction of the fees. So their take home pay can be substantially higher. Interesting. Okay. What challenges do adult businesses face with traditional payment methods? Traditional payment methods often come with a lot of baggage for adult businesses. Like I mentioned, the high fees, there are certain restrictions and there’s the ongoing risk of sudden account closures, the constant threat of chargeback fees cutting into your profits. In addition, many payment processes are hesitant to work with the adult industry, leaving businesses with limited options. And these limited options are aware of this and can use this as leverage to charge inordinately high fees. Yeah. I think that that kind of it’s interesting the way you put that because it’s kind of like, well, how high do we want to charge somebody? Yeah, it’s sort of a balancing act between how much can you get away with while still making it profitable for, you know, for both parties. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know that. How does Confirmo ensure compliance and security in crypto transactions? Now, that is one of the major concerns that we hear. So it’s one of our top priorities. We implement a KYC or a know your customer policy, as well as ongoing AML procedures to ensure that we’re operating within the legal frameworks and we’re not complicit with any illegal activity. We have partnered with some of the best in the cybersecurity industry to maintain the cutting edge. We are really good at what we do and that’s processing payments. And rather than leverage ourselves and try and branch out into an industry that we’re not as familiar with, we have partnered with some of the top names in the industry so that they can continue to do their thing to do what they do best. We’ll continue to do what we do best and in complement or sort of symbiotically, we have created a very robust and secure platform and we’re very proud to say that in over 11 years of operation, we’ve never had a single security breach. Wow. That’s fantastic. What’s the background on the people in charge of Confirmo? Well, we began as our co-founders were the creators of CoinMate, which is one of Central ’s largest crypto exchanges. And shortly after inception, they realized the necessity in the market for a crypto payment gateway in order to sort of act as the bridge for cryptocurrencies and businesses looking to access this new revenue stream. And so from our birth, we sort of had a practical purpose and our founders had a very strong understanding of blockchain technology. So we’ve been ordered to sort of carry this direction throughout the 11 years of operation now. So it’s almost crazy to hear 11 years attached to crypto. I guess it has been around that long. Yeah. It is kind of crazy to hear. We were probably one of the first crypto payment gateways in the industry. 2014 is certainly the early days as far as retail crypto transactions go. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when did crypto get started? When did Bitcoin first come out? I believe it was released in 2009. Very, very sort of small network of computer enthusiasts. And it really began to gain traction in 2011. And shortly after that in 2012, it had its first epic bull run where it began to enter the mainstream’s radar. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, it was, I mean, I remember buying one Bitcoin and writing it up to about, I forget what it was, $2,000 or $3,000. And I said, "Ah, it’s about as good as it’s ever going to get." And I sold. And then it crashed right after that. And it was just like, "Ooh, I was smart." Yeah, maybe not. Anyway. Yeah, I remember the day it crashed. I was one of the early adopters and I had invested heavily and I had ambitious dreams of an early retirement and then watching it just hang further and further. It was like a slow motion moment. Did you hang in there? I did, sort of by necessity. I became a long-term holder. Yeah, boy, it’s been on, I mean, we record this middle of April, three months after the new administration has come in and it’s been quite a roller coaster since then, way up and then boom, it drops. Yeah, and I think it’s sort of mirroring the stock market as well. Seems to be. Yeah, yeah, it really seems to be. It didn’t used to be that way though. It used to be that crypto kind of danced to the beat of its own drummer, but now it seems like when the market goes down, crypto goes down, when the market goes up, crypto goes up. Yeah, it’s an excellent observation. I think the reason behind it is that we’re seeing more and more institutional players begin to diversify their portfolio using cryptocurrencies and you now have massive whales that if they begin to sell off can trigger some pretty wild swings in the market. Yeah, I think there’s one on the White House actually. What are the benefits, at least one. What are the benefits of using Confirmo compared to other crypto payment solutions? Well, certain aspects of Confirmo were specifically designed with the adult industry in mind. We communicate with our partners in the industry to understand the unique challenges of this sector. A couple of the things that really help us to stand out are is our dedicated support. We have the highest rated customer support on G2 and Trustpilot. We’re a category leader and we not only extend the support to our partners, but all the way to their end users so that any crypto related support tickets can be managed by our team on their behalf so they don’t have to worry about those headaches. In addition, our pricing structure is universal. We have no hidden fees so they know exactly what they’re getting into. We have simplified the process. Like I mentioned in the beginning, we have the API if you want to fully automate the process. We have payment buttons which you can easily add to your website if you have a bit of understanding of HTML and basic web design. Or if it’s all like hieroglyphics to you, the manual invoicing option is quick, it’s efficient and we have created a very user friendly platform that simply asks you to type in the name and the amount that you want to pay and then you send it to whatever email address you need. We give people a very, very simple way to make use of this. The functionality is really what we had in mind. In addition, we give people peace of mind because they know that they’re not suddenly going to have their accounts deactivated for arbitrary reasons. That is definitely a strength of crypto and why a lot of people have added crypto to their payment menu because they never know when there’s going to be a problem. I’ve heard of even like beyond just having your accounts deactivated, I’ve heard of sabotage taking place where someone will consistently purchase and then create chargebacks to essentially make someone’s business unsustainable. Right. There’s all kinds of things like that. When cryptocurrencies does confirm or support and tell me a little more about the settlement process, how does that work? We support the eight most popular cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins like USDT or USDC and we were pretty deliberate about selecting these eight and elaborating on the networks involved. We... Wait a minute, no Dogecoin? No unfortunately, no Dogecoin. Elon’s going to be upset. Yeah, well, I think he’ll get over it. I think that the actual retail use of these mean coins is very limited. The demand that we’ve seen is primarily in these eight and rather than extend ourselves trying to support the latest trendy coin, we have chosen to direct our efforts to elaborating on the networks. So we have over 20 networks including layer two networks such as Arbitrum which have a fraction of the network fees associated with layer one networks and the settlement process is extremely straightforward. It’s configurable. So it’s all up to your preference. Cropments are converted to your preferred fiat currency or stablecoin and deposited into your bank or digital wallet with T plus one settlement time. You can choose if you want it to be triggered on a daily basis, weekly basis. If you want it to be set to a dollar amount, you can receive the cryptos and have them remain in that cryptocurrency or you can have them converted into fiat or stablecoins immediately thereby eliminating the risk of volatility. And that way you’re able to accept crypto from all of your end users without having to necessarily hold any of it. And all of this settlement process can be fully initiated so that on a daily or weekly basis you’re simply receiving funds into your bank account. Okay. You were talking about different networks. I didn’t quite understand that part. Yes. So there are certain blockchains or networks that are like ledgers and they’re recording all of the transactions. In order for this to take place, there is a level of computing power that’s necessary and an electricity cost associated. And in order to compensate for this, they charge what’s called network fees or gas fees. And this is essentially to pay for the electricity to process the payments. So instead of paying a bank, you’re simply paying for the electricity to process this payment. Interesting. Never heard that before. There are a number of sort of legacy networks that have been developed and they’re functional, they’re great, but there are more recent Layer 2 networks which have even further improved the efficiency. And they’re like anything is a bit of hesitancy to adopt these new networks. But if the original Layer 1 networks were coming with 50% reduction in fees, these new Layer 2s would have a 75% reduction in fees. So ultimately, given that it’s in people’s interest, we’re seeing that businesses are introducing this to their clients so that both parties can increase their profit margins without really having to do anything. Okay. So it all comes down to efficiency and saving money. Exactly. Yeah. Fortunately, like I mentioned, our founding team all came from a background in cryptocurrency. So they’re pretty aggressive in addressing these insights and implementing the latest network updates. Sure. And you guys have to stay competitive too, so I’m sure that helps. Absolutely. Okay. How does Confirmo help businesses mitigate chargebacks? Mitigates. Well, that’s the real beauty of it is there are no chargebacks. So there are no chargeback fees. Customs can be requested and issued with no penalties against the studio. We recognize that it’s a pretty big issue and it doesn’t really need to be that way. It seems like creators are getting screwed twice once on set and then again by their banking partner. And it doesn’t seem right. Very well played. I like that. How can adult content creators and independent businesses also use Confirmo? Well, we cater to enterprises and individual creators alike. It’s for everyone in the adult industry. If you can simply produce a handful of documents to satisfy our KYB process. And we have a very, very cooperative legal team that has a lot of experience with people who have... I can’t recall the term, but they’re essentially self-employed or an entrepreneur. And so they may not have all of the documents of a publicly registered company. As long as we can make sure that it is a legitimate business and it’s not compliant with any anti-money laundering, we’re happy to provide technical assistance and consulting on the best practices to help big and small. How surprising is it to some people that you guys comply with all that? Because here’s the thing, okay? Crypto’s reputation isn’t exactly one of complying with anti-money laundering and going about the same KYC that banks go about. If you told people that, a lot of people I think would be surprised. I’m not surprised because you guys have a company and I’m sure licenses to protect. But let’s face it, in the history of crypto is guys sending emails saying, "I saw what you did on your webcam. Give me X amount of Bitcoin." God, if I get one more of those, I’m going to break my computer. Things like that, right? And the dark web and everything else. So how surprised are people about that? Well, it ranges on how familiar they are with the trajectory of cryptocurrencies. Many people seem to be shocked. They seem to have this misconception. I wouldn’t even really necessarily call it a misconception. It’s just an outdated perception. Unfortunately, when cryptocurrencies were at a nascent stage, they were heavily used for less than ethical purposes. There were a number of shady characters and nefarious businesses developed to support these transfer of funds. However, as the industry continues to mature, the ecosystem around it also continues to mature. As you look around, there are major institutional players like Visa, Bridge, Stripe, all beginning to take cryptocurrency seriously. And when you factor in the MECA regulations, the licensing requirements that are coming in Europe, it really will be taken as seriously as traditional finance methods. So if you haven’t been paying attention, you would be shocked what has developed in the last five years. Talk about the trajectory of that. How has that progressed from the time that you first started dealing in crypto? Oh, wow. It has become legitimized. It has developed a use case. It’s proven itself and it actually has a commercial use in practice right now. We’re seeing that it’s making an increasingly large presence in the Treasury Department because crypto knows no borders. It can be transferred across the world with virtually no intermediaries for a fraction of the fees involved. And when it comes to large institutions, multinational conglomerates that have millions of dollars in each of their subdivisions bank accounts and they need to transfer these, it’s simply a more efficient or a more cost effective method. And this sort of benefits on the balance sheet is really what’s causing the drive. Simply the efficiency of being able to transfer large amounts of sums almost immediately without the three or four intermediaries involved in the traditional method. It’s revolutionary for finance. Sure. But let’s talk about the other side, volatility. All right. How do you guys deal with that? So we have essentially taken all of the risk off of the merchant and the end users. We accept all of the liability associated. And to put it simply, when a user hits the pay button, an invoice will be generated. We lock in the exchange rate at that moment. So whatever Bitcoin to USDA is trading at, we’ll say 100,000 just to make it simple. That will be the exactest exchange rate. And we’ll lock that in for a default of 15 minutes, but this can be increased. So if by chance the price dips in the next 15, 20 minutes, you won’t have to worry about it. You’ll still get the same exact amounts that was displayed when you initially created the invoice. And any fluctuations, by chance, there is a reduction in price. It loses value. It goes to 99,000 just minutes before we will swallow all of that overhead. And with the conversion option, if there are some cryptocurrency enthusiasts, they can accept Bitcoin from their end users and they can hold that Bitcoin and let it ride. Or they can convert it into a fiat or stablecoin so they don’t need to hold any. And given that we lock in the exchange rates, yeah, we’ve completely eliminated the risk of volatility. And that’s all determined ahead of time, right? Yes. Yes. We use the exchange rate cracking in real time so that as soon as your customer hits the buy button, the exact amount that was displayed is what they’ll pay. I mean, the action of converting it to fiat or holding as crypto, that’s all determined ahead of time by the user, right? Yes. Yes. They would set their preferences ahead of time so that when incoming transactions come in, depending on what they set, it would then be converted or left in its native currency. Okay. Great. What’s the process for integrating ConfirmOS payment gateway either into your business or into your personal use case? It’s surprisingly simple. Go through the steps. The first step is just to go to our webpage, ConfirmOS.net, and hit the login button on the top right corner. You’re going to be asked for your name, country, and an email. If you’d like, you can put in a phone number, but that’s optional. And from there, you immediately have access to our dashboard. You can begin to preview it. You can play around with it. You can conduct some test payments if you’d like. We have full functionality all day with very low transaction limits. We don’t want anyone getting any ideas. As soon as you upload the KYC documents through our partner, we’ve partnered with .file for a secure portal, and it’s very, very sleek. You can upload all of the requested documents. Once they’re reviewed by our AML compliance, obviously, you’re good to go. If you want to do manual invoicing, it could be two days. And our API has been polished to make it as easy to work with as possible, and we’re very proud that we have a 1.5 mandate. So for larger studios, they could begin in a week, two weeks. And I should mention that this is a dual platform. So within the 1.5 mandate, that would be for-- Which means what? That means a week to two? No, that would be 1.5 days. 1.5 mandates as a programmer should be able to-- I think you said 1.5 mandate. I’m like, 1.5 mandate. That’s that. OK. Go ahead. Essentially, it can be done in as little as a week, even for some of the larger platforms. And in the larger platforms, we’ve seen an additional value in that they can use our platform to send payments to their creators or wherever they may be, to their contractors. And that way, they’re able to bypass the banking industry by having the payments directly to the content creators in stablecoins, and then they can then, from there, have it converted into their desired currency at will. That’s fantastic. And there’s a good cost, usually, to do payouts as well. So they’re saving money there, and they’re also saving money over a bank wire, right? Oh, yeah. And people have told me outrageous fees. The maximum that we charge for payouts is 0.5%, which we feel is very fair considering-- Yeah, this is a transfer of the funds. It’s not like we’re adding any additional content. Yeah. Let’s talk about two things. What documents-- does a company have to give you? And what documents do you ask for from an individual, such as, say, a creator? From a company, we’ll need an extract from the business registry, which should be no issue. We’ll need some identification from the UBO. We will need a proof of address, as well as a corporate bank statement if they intend to receive fiat settlements. Other than that, for most institutions that should be satisfactory for individuals, you’ll simply need to provide your own identification, proof of address. You’ll need to briefly state the purpose that you would like to use our gateway. And you’ll need to provide some kind of documentation with your business ID on it. That’s documentation. It can be one of a handful of documents. One of the easiest things that we’ve seen is just tax return. Yeah, I was going to say, because not everyone has a company. Exactly. Yeah, the easiest thing for individual creators is if they can simply produce a tax return, we should be able to verify the legitimacy of their operation based on that. Interesting. OK. So what are some common misconceptions about crypto payments in the adult industry? Some common misconceptions. Well, like you said, that it is primarily for illegal activities. Although, yeah, maybe 10 years ago, it was notorious for, I’m not even going to mention, but being associated with several criminal enterprises. Drugs, guns, everything in the dark web, white slave trade. I’ll say it. OK, yeah, exactly. Everything bad under the sun. It was being financed by cryptocurrencies. But that’s simply not the case anymore. Now it’s being pretty heavily regulated. There are institutions in place which monitor the blockchain transactions. So when it comes to reputable institutions like Confirmo, who are processing all of these, we’re able to identify if these payments are coming from North Korea or another heavily sanctioned country. We’re able to identify if there’s something strange going on. For example, if there is a luxury watch or a luxury yacht merchant who is claiming to sell luxury yachts, and we noticed that they’ve been processing 10,000 payments a day for $15 to $20, we would be notified, reach out, like the early days where really anything goes, you can get away with transferring millions and millions under the radar. That’s simply not true. It’s a legitimate payment method. And another very common misconception is that it’s difficult to use. One of the major issues has been simply having the ecosystem around cryptocurrencies developed so that there’s a convenient way to use it because there simply was no method in place for people to quickly, effortlessly pay for things using crypto the way they would with the credit card. But as companies are coming together, now we have very reputable wallets for people to store their funds. Now there are payment gateways so that businesses can accept them. So people have a place to spend them. There are convenient settlement methods. There are very, very credible exchanges which are fully insured. One of our goals really is to make crypto payments as easy and as boring as using a credit card. And to a large degree, I’d say we’ve succeeded. Where do you see crypto 10 years from now, though? You see now that it’s actually regulated and there are companies like yours that are legitimate, that are making sure that the transactions are legitimate. But talk about 10 years from now. Where do you see it then? I see it having a much more mainstream presence, especially as the world shrinks and the digital nomad lifestyles become more popular. We’re seeing people going across seas and traveling more and more. And you? And like me. And as two Americans talk from the Czech Republic and Thailand, right? Yeah. I don’t know about you, but one of the issues that I have is the process of exchanging my US dollars for Czech crowns or for Euros or for Hungarian, for different local currencies. It can be a bit of a hassle. But really, the most cost efficient way that I have found is bringing cash. Well, I find the most cost effective way, if you’re talking about US dollars, is just to go to an ATM because the money exchange is ripping off. Precisely. The money exchange is ripping off and it may be unique to my bank, but I have to pay these surcharges for ATM withdrawals. Yeah, minor. They’re very minor here, though. Yeah, not that these are major hurdles, but no. You still come out ahead. Yeah, it is good. In fact, it’s very convenient compared to having a satchel with nine different currencies in it, like my parents had to. But with cryptocurrencies, you’re able to just have one digital wallet with your primary liquid funds and you can quickly and easily convert that as you need into various currencies across the globe. So I think we’ll definitely see it become more common amongst the digital nomads and the sort of younger backpacking travelers. In addition, I think that we’re going to see it start becoming a much more common form of remittances. People sending money back to their home countries, like I mentioned, crypto is borderless. So if they’re able to retain more of the money and simplify the process, I think that will quickly become after there is some educational, some reeducation done to show people how to do it because, of course, there’s going to be some hesitancy with any change. But once people realize how to do it, they do it a few times, I think it’s going to dominate their remittance market. Interesting. Well, we shall see. It’s always fun to ask people those types of questions. What level of technical expertise is required to integrate Confirmo’s payment solutions? So no level of technical expertise is required. Perfect for me. We provide support to guide anyone with basic technical knowledge if they would like to integrate using our API. And if they want to, if they have even a little bit of knowledge, we have created a very simple process so you can create an embedded payment button, stick it right on your website. And right there, it’ll say pay with crypto. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. And if you don’t want to see any code whatsoever, you don’t even want to touch the back end of a website. As long as you have the name, the email and the price in mind, you can begin sending invoices in a minute flat. Yeah, I don’t think an adult when guys have their, you know what, in their hand, that’s going to be too effective. Yeah, there is that hurdle, that obstacle. And we’re very, very close to creating or addressing this problem. We’ve been working on automated subscription payments in cryptocurrencies for quite a while and we’re very close to deployment. Something that we’re super excited about. I hope the RCPA doesn’t get mad that I brought it up, but we developed this specifically with some of our partners in the adult industry in mind because they were asking for it. Sometimes people just want to set and forget, so to speak, they want to create the subscription and then have it truly automated. And what we have found in the industry is that there is no truly automated process. What some of our competitors or what other gateways are offering is a sort of recurring invoice where it would remind you or generate a new invoice every month. But there’s none that is truly automated payments where you don’t have to do any intervention. So if they go with Confirmo, they can’t do recurring payments? We can do recurring payments. Oh, okay, good. Good. I wanted to play that out. But the truly automated flow, which we have in mind, is something which we don’t quite have ready for a commercial deployment. Okay, sorry. What’s the difference between that and a recurring payment? I’m not sure I understand. A recurring payment, let’s say you have to make a payment every 30 days. And at the end of the 30 days, it will prompt you to make a new payment. It may send you an invoice and then you pay it. Sorry to interrupt, but generally, you’re on a recurring payment. It just doesn’t. Exactly. And that’s what, yeah, the terminology is a little bit confusing. What you’re describing is a recurring payment. And that’s something that we’re trying to achieve. And we’re calling it automated subscriptions to sort of distinguish it from what others are offering as recurring payments, which isn’t truly a recurring payment. Or I mean, technically it is, but it’s not a really automated payment. What’s a recurring payment now? Somebody gets an email that says, "Do you want to continue subscribing to the website?" Essentially, well, there are a few different options of what it would look like in practice, but it could be either email-based. There could be something within their website or UI that warns them that the subscription is going to expire in three days. You should top up your account with another 30, 60, 90 days. We don’t want that. We just want it to happen. Yeah, precisely. And this is something that we’ve grown to understand by communicating with our partners. And we have operationally developed something which we’re very proud of. It’s currently functioning on limited networks, which is why we haven’t had a full announcement yet. But we are sort of trying to finish tying off all the loose ends and that we want the design to be very sleek. We want to see what it looks like in each step of the way and what our sort of our merchant clients would like to see, what would be most applicable to them. And so we’re in sort of this late stage of designing sort of what the process will be like, both for the end user and the merchant and what they’re looking for so that we can sort of build it in tandem with them to provide an ideal solution not only for them, but that will be applicable to the entire adult industry. That’s great. Well, hopefully in a couple months when this airs, that will already be happening. We will hope. By the way, when people integrate crypto into a website and then they have other options, namely credit cards is always the main one, but there’s ACH and other things that people offer generally. What percentage do people usually use the crypto option? Do you know that? It’s an excellent question. I know. It varies. It varies both by industry and by audience. Well, I’m talking in adult. I’m talking about adult membership sites. In adult, I would say 10, 15%. 15% would be on the high end, maybe on the low end, 5% averaging around 10. That’s good. That’s extra money. That’s money they probably wouldn’t get otherwise. It’s probably double what it was two years ago. Yes. Yes. No doubt about it. So what do you see as we talked about the future for crypto? What do you see as the future of crypto and adult? I think that crypto and adult, once we have the payment process is in place to have these set and forget methods. I think it will become one of the preferred methods. I think we’ll also see this embraced by the community, embraced by the creators, and that with their push. I’ll phrase it like this. If you’re subscribing to a content creator and she makes a video asking people to pay in cryptocurrency for the simple reason that she wants to receive more of their funds, I am pretty confident that a lot of them will not have an issue downloading a crypto wallet and paying at the request of their favorite stars or of their favorite creators. I think that once there are some educational materials introducing all of the developments that have happened in the last five years, I think we’ll see a major push towards and from the community, both internally, we’ll see a major push towards stablecoin in particular, stablecoin support. Yes, because as you talked about, a big bonus of this is that it’s anonymous. I think if the user knows it’s anonymous, that’s going to certainly increase their participation. The anonymity is huge. I think another thing that people don’t really think about is the content creators need to receive these funds from the studios. This process, just this can be problematic if the studio has a reputation or has in for whatever reason presented itself in a negative light in the eyes of the banking question, they can have their bank accounts closed really for doing nothing except receiving money from the studio. It’s not only helping on the end user for the customers, but also for the creators themselves. I think ultimately the creators will dictate the market in time. There may be 20, 30 years ago was not as much leverage, but I think that there’s a turning of the tides in that regard. They got all the leverage now. More like five, 10 years ago, even 10 years ago is a long time. As of the last five years, the creators and performers have taken all the leverage. That’s a beautiful thing. I think it’s really democratized our industry. I think that’s something that I’m very proud of and I think a lot of people are. Andrew, I’d like to thank you for being our guest today on Adults at Broker Talk. I hope we’ll get a chance to do it again soon. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure chatting about Confirmo and the future of crypto in the adult industry. Next time you’re in Prague for TES, please give us a ring. You know it. The broker tip today is part two of how to buy a site. Last week we discussed first deciding the type of site you want to buy and then establishing what your budget is. Next it’s time to look for your new website. So where do you look? Well adult site broker is a great place to start. We always have a nice variety of website and non-website properties for sale, but if there’s a particular type of site you want, we can also act as your buyer’s broker to help you find just the right site. Other places to look are boards like xbiz.net and gfy.com, but to be completely honest, unless what you’re looking for is a really low end property, you’re probably not going to find what you’re looking for there. Of course, you could contact site owners yourself, but take it from someone who does it for a living. It’s a major hassle and it can be really hard to even find out who owns a site. Most all adult sites use who is privacy from their domain registrar, so when you send them an email, it will be an anonymous address and in most cases the emails aren’t returned. We have a huge database of sellers and generally know who owns what. And if it’s a website of note, if we don’t know who owns it, we can usually find out. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. Next week we’ll be speaking with Nate Mallory of Only Tax Deductions. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest, Andrew Rivera of Confirmo. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
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