One promising example is SpankChain. It's a cryptocurrency specifically designed for the porn market.
Traditionally, it's hard to make money in porn due to fraud and chargebacks. Most payment processors also won't touch you. But crypto has no chargebacks, so it's a natural fit.
One could argue that if you have to dip down to the level of porn just to find some value, ICOs are worth dismissing. But I would say that it's a decent example of the future potential.
Contrary to popular belief, porn was available on Betamax...
More to the point is there any evidence of the mainstream porn user actually adopting SpankChain (or any of the other supposed "blockchains for porn") as opposed to ICO profiteers adopting pornography as a relatively plausible potential future business model to sell unnecessary tokens at an implausibly high value?
Just had a look at the company page of the service. The CEO is a "decentralization laser gun" who boasts about how much money he raised in other ICOs (hmmm...) as well as his favourite computer games. In lieu of an actual testimonial, we get him in blockquote saying "we've honestly got the best team ever". Apparently this is one of the more promising ICOs and yet it's making me feel the SEC parody ICO site was a bit mild...
A good question. And the answer is a bit surprising: community.
If you search for spankchain, you'll likely end up on their discord. There are friendly people to help answer your questions and set you up.
It's the same advantage YC has: by being a meta-layer, you end up attracting everyone who's trying to do anything in the space, rather than one specific aspect. Eventually, the network effects are most of the value.
Assuming I'm someone who wants to spend money on adult entertainment, why would I want to use a coin specifically for that as opposed to a general purpose coin? Same for someone who works in adult entertainment; why would I want a coin who's only use is to pay for porn?
Does it actually solve the problem or just move it by one step/layer? Payment processors are already blocking cryptocurrency exchanges since best way to use stolen credit card is to buy cryptocurrency.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801 was what got me thinking along these lines. If CCBill has a stranglehold on the porn payment processing industry, crypto is a natural threat to them. And that implies crypto has real power to shake up old models.
Traditionally, it's hard to make money in porn due to fraud and chargebacks. Most payment processors also won't touch you. But crypto has no chargebacks, so it's a natural fit.
One could argue that if you have to dip down to the level of porn just to find some value, ICOs are worth dismissing. But I would say that it's a decent example of the future potential.