Photo: CC0

A number of international organisations, including the World Health Organisation and Amnesty International, support decriminalization of prostitution.

With legalization come government regulations, safety regulations and health regulations. Decriminalization on the other hand is the removal of laws and regulation - under this model prostitution is treated just like any other occupation.

Sex worker and activist Yevgeniya told Sputnik that legalization is not the way to go.

Yevgeniya believes decriminalization is the way to go because it gives sex workers labor rights

"Decriminalization is the government basically taking their hands off of our business and treating our work like work because it is. It allows us to not fear the police because they tend to be some of our biggest abusers."

Elle Tarks Coles, trans sex worker activist from Queensland Australia, told Sputnik about her experience within the industry.

Ms. Coles added that sex worker rights activists in Australia have launched a new campaign calling for law reform in the state of Queensland, with the aim of achieving full decriminalization.

Among arguments against decriminalization is the suggestion it would lead to more sex trafficking as the market and demand for prostitution grows.

Some advocates against decriminalization of sex work claim that the only progressive solution in the debate is abolition, as "decriminalization of the sex trade benefits pimps and brothel-owners, not women."

Investigative journalist, feminist activist and author of The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth, Julie Bindel, has argued in an opinion piece:

"What I have discovered, while researching campaigns for the legalization or decriminalization of prostitution in the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK, is that sex industry bosses have an influential voice in such campaigns, often providing funding; and that groups claiming to represent "sex workers" are just as likely to be a voice for pimps as they are to represent the women who earn their living selling sex.

"If prostitution is framed as work, it stands to reason that the workers require rights. The problem is that the term "sex worker", coined in the 1980s and increasingly used by police, health workers and the media, includes pornographers, strippers and pimps, as well as those directly selling sex."

According to Charlotte Rose, who has been working in the sex industry in the UK for almost twenty years, the truth element when it comes to sex industry is very media driven.

"We are associated with crime, drugs, theft and alcohol and trafficking. You either want to become a sex worker or you have to – forced by the socio-economics of today, such as bills, tax credits and poverty. When it comes to trafficking coercion, that's when somebody else is in charge and forcing you to do things. We will always be challenged by the media and the public, with dehumanization, stigmatization and marginalization," she told Sputnik.

Access to online platforms is crucial for many women and men in the industry. It opens the door to online communication with clients, virtual payment systems, social media, blogging and means to addressing members of local and international communities.

Attempts to impose regulations 'on the online' in the US, have triggered an outcry among sex workers and some non-profits in their opposition to the bill, dubbed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA).

The legislation aims to make it easier to bring to criminal charges against websites that knowingly facilitate or promote sex trafficking. It directed at websites such as Backpage, which has been accused of facilitating sexual exploitation in 2016.

Photo: The US Congress building. AFP 2018, Mladen Antonov

According to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the legislation could actually harm the very people it is intended to protect, as it establishes a gray area when it comes to definition of "promotion of prostitution."

"FOSTA threatens the lives and safety of sex workers — people who are disproportionately LGBTQ and people of color. The legislation does this through a dangerously broad definition of "promotion of prostitution," which is not limited to trafficking and could sweep in any trading of sex for money or other goods. The bill also creates a new, vaguely defined federal crime for the facilitation of prostitution which could result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years. FOSTA's definition of "facilitation" is so open to interpretation that it could include critical harm reduction and anti-violence tactics that sex workers depend on to survive."

In turn, the US government is stressing the importance of tools FOSTA provides "for federal prosecutors and state officials to fight the scourge of sex trafficking."

"President Donald J. Trump applauds the House of Representatives for its work on the 'Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017,' which passed the House today.

"The president looks forward to continuing to work with Congress in order to hold people who participate in human trafficking accountable for their horrific crimes," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement in February.

The internet doesn't come bearing only goods for sex workers. With new opportunities come new challenges, including cyber bullying, as well as strict regulations by banks and other financial institutions.

"A lot of the time safety has been changed by the use of online technology but the unfortunate part of it is that we have now come across a bit more stigma in form of online bullying."

Theodora, who is a financial dominatrix in France, says she tries not to pay attention to negative comments online.

"There will always be people who try to come at adult workers. If you see criticism on the internet, don't read it. You have to stay positive and focused."

When it comes to receiving money for sexual services or any type of sex work via banking institutions or online payment systems, sex workers face numerous challenges.

PayPal has stopped handling payments for 'adult' merchandise on June 12, 2003 and even prior to that - in May 2003 - the company had stopped processing payments for downloads of pornographic material.

PayPal's competitor, Yahoo! PayDirect, also does not accept payments for adult content.

"A lot of payment processors and banks shut down accounts of suspected sex workers whether or not we use our accounts to accept payments. In the US, Operation Choke Point was a program where banks would shut down checking and savings accounts of businesses deemed to pose a risk to the bank, which included sex workers," sex worker and activist Yevgeniya told Sputnik.

She added that Airbnb would shut down accounts of sex workers or anyone the company suspects to be part of the sex industry, out of the fear of pop-up brothels.

Commenting on premises used as brothels, Airbnb had previously said in a statement:

"We have zero tolerance for this type of behavior and permanently remove bad actors [guests] from our platform. Over 260 million have traveled on Airbnb and bad experiences are extremely rare."

Sex work has been at the vanguard of cryptocurrency, it keeps us and the clients anonymous, explains Yevgeniya.

"I haven't personally accepted Bitcoin, I prefer cash. But I'm also fully out as a sex worker, so I'm trying to make a political statement."

Charlotte Rose adds that cryptocurrencies provide trust and safety within the professionalism of the industry, creating a more open approach to sex work.

"One – we are out there. Two – we have a system that allows us to be more professional in what we do. Three, we use trusted vendors. It is more to do with trust. Trust is so important. Every account has to be created and approved so somebody has to check that. When that's in place, I know that somebody is not going to risk coming to sexually assault me if they have a cryptoaccount because their details will be somewhere. And if I need to, I can go to the local authorities and the police and those details will be presented for my safety."

Talking about her experience as sex worker in Britain, Charlotte told Sputnik that since she is unable to get invoices from all her clients, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are on constantly on her case.

"I've been hounded by the taxman because I wasn't able to get invoices from all of my clients. Because of that the HMRC will only allow me a certain amount of my profits as expenditures. We are hounded and fined - penalized because of the jobs that we do. We are dealing with cash all the time and the cash element doesn't give the insurance of professionalism."

However, according to Elle Tarks Coles, cryptocurrencies don't play a large role in the industry in Australia.

"We can still place ads with credit cards and some of us accept credit cards as sex workers," she told Sputnik.

For some, payments in virtual currency are a guarantor of the client's transparency and good intentions.

There is a downside to using cryptocurrency by sex workers, and some of it is due to the unregulated nature of the crypto market.

"Unfortunately, there have recently been some scam Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). This is an unregulated space so it has attracted some unscrupulous people who are taking advantage of the crypto market hype. Before participating in any token sale, it is important that you exercise caution and do your research to learn about the team, the technology and their go-to-market strategy post ICO," Leah Callon-Butler, co-founder of Intimate – a cryptocurrency for the adult industry, told Sputnik.

The adult industry has recently seen a rise of numerous start-ups offering various methods and channels of paying for sex toys, services and videos. The demand for security and privacy for both customers and sellers boosted supply of companies, aiming to safeguard the gates of the sex industry marketplace.

Yevgenia, who is out as a sex worker, told Sputnik why Bitcoin is deemed a safer option by most professionals.

Photo: CC0

Theodora believes in investing in smaller cryptocurrencies because they are the most stable at the moment. The speed of transactions is also an important factor for her.

"Everyone talks about Bitcoin and obviously it was the first and the most well-known cryptocurrency. But I feel like other cryptocurrencies will be more important in the future. I don't have a financial background, but the funny thing is many of my clients were in finance and they talked to me and I learned from them. Now, I am teaching it. I really like Monero, which is one of the safest, leaves no trace and doesn't charge as much as Bitcoin per transaction. With Bitcoin you have to wait for a couple of days to get the money — that's a long time, whereas with some others it is almost instant," she told Sputnik.

Charlotte Rose, uses Bitcoin for now but plans to switch to Intimate because it "has already got the backing of businesses and corporations for its use in the sex industry" and because it is more trustworthy.

"If somebody would come to see me for an hour – which is 160 – and they pay me 160 but within the next hour that rate of currency drops and I am using Bitcoin – I am not guaranteed to get that 160 returned. With Intimate, if I charge 160 and the currency drops to 150, Intimate will still get me my 160. That's the element of trust, that's massive."

The co-founder of Intimate, launched in October 2017, Leah Callon-Butler, told Sputnik intimate.io is a pseudonymous system that places the responsibility in the hands of the individual.

"We partner with third party organisations who can complete 'off chain' ID verification. If two users want to meet, they don't need to reveal their ID details, they can simply prove that a trusted third party knows who they are. ID and transactions are handled by two completely different organisations so the data is completely obfuscated but all parties benefit from the knowledge that somebody knows who is interacting in the system and, should a situation be serious enough, there is recourse. The beauty of blockchain is that the control of this information is in the hands of the users – with intimate.io users can select what information they share and don't share."

She explained Intimate act a payment gateway for all segments of the industry from porn and live cams, to retailers of sex toys and intimate apparel, to Japanese Love Hotels, to physical human-to-human interactions such as escorts and dating.

Among companies targeting the adult entertainment industry, are Sexcoin, Okoin, Spankchain, Titcoin, VanillaPlay and others.

Due to its lack of regulation, the crypto market and its applications in the sex industry have raised concerns of ways cryptocurrencies can be used in facilitating sexual exploitation and trafficking.

The elements of trust and safety, so important to sex workers, have also come to interest a team of university researchers from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and the University of California. In 2017, the scientists have created the first automated techniques to identify ads potentially tied to human trafficking rings and link them to public information from Bitcoin .

"The technology we've built finds connections between ads. Is the pimp behind that post for Backpage also behind this post in Craigslist? Is he the same man who keeps receiving Bitcoin for trafficked girls? Questions like these are answerable only through more sophisticated technological tools — exactly what we've built in this work — that link ads together using payment mechanisms and the language in the ads themselves," said Rebecca Portnoff, a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate, in the university's press release.

When it comes to adult entertainment business, the sheer number of various legislation and regulations internationally corresponds with the unnerving bulk of threats and challenges still faced by sex workers universally.

Cryptocurrency is a relatively new player in the global financial system but could potentially help solve the issues faced by of one of the oldest industries in the world.