Back in January, I stumbled upon a project very different from the hundred others I had looked into that week. “Escorting Meets the Sharing Economy.” The team was anonymous. They claimed to be extra-jurisdictional — hidden behind several Tor layers. And they were offering an ICO with an equity rather than utility token. It couldn’t get much more controversial. It kept me up until 4am that night researching. And the next couple of weeks, I followed their Slack channel until finally making the decision to invest.

This article is my account of the business case of the century.

“If escorting was completely legal, how would that look? What service would dominate the industry?”

An anonymous team led by sex workers, IT security experts and growth hackers asked themselves this question and concluded that it would be some sort of Tinder-like app interface with screening, booking and payment all-in-one. And they set out to build what is now known as PinkDate. Leveraging blockchain technology to crowdfund this venture, they created an ERC20 token, PDP, that functions as an equity share in the company with claims to dividends. And now, almost a year later, the PinkDate platform is about to be launched in Toronto as their main ICO begins with the first transactions already having gone through the platform.

As they were building their platform, two bills, The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), were passed in the US that had spillover effects for all escorts. In response, Craigslist removed their “Personals” section, Backpage was seized by Federal Authorities and many other smaller sites voluntarily shut down. There has since been anecdotal reports of sex workers going missing, some confirmed dead and some assaulted and raped, as a result of being pushed offline to find work on the streets. There is no doubt that a great void has been left in the industry.

Even if prostitution was completely legal, finding and screening clients as an independent escort is a lengthy and costly process. Listing sites charge high fees and screening a client can take several hours. And the reality is that prostitution is illegal in most countries. As such, securing payment is no walk in the park either. If they find a pimp, they often take a large cut and leave little room for the escort to choose her own clients — not to mention risks of falling victim to drug abuse, human trafficking or worse. From a client’s perspective, I personally tried looking for an escort, but all I could find is a sea of potentially fake ads, which made be drop it.

As an economist would put it, PinkDate essentially solves all of the market failures and inefficiencies of the industry and comes close to establishing complete contingent contracts, efficient bargaining and complete information symmetry. It crowds-out opportunistic intermediaries and increases profits for independent escorts, while also making it safer and more enjoyable to be an escort. And although this is speculation on my part — and not the intent of the team — I don’t even think this is just a $157b market. PinkDate is focusing on professionalism — and thus only take in professional established escorts — but I think we may even see this industry grow in the near future.

The birth control pill enabled for a sexual liberation of women in the 60s and 70s that has radically changed intersexual dynamics. Unbound by biology, women today have instant access to social media through their smartphones where they — as sexual selectors — can order men to their place with the click of a button. Rather than waiting for men to approach them on the street, this allows women to more easily express their sexuality — and thus also to leverage their sexuality for resources. While they traditionally were limited to hoarding drinks in the bar and pushing for marriage, women on Instagram are now flown around the world on dates, girls are travelling with no money using Tinder, and sugar daddy dating sites are flourishing.

Now, prostitution as a profession is still stigmatised. But I think that might be slowly changing.

During sociology thesis writing at university, a conversation with two young attractive female students fell on PinkDate. They are both in long-term relationships and relatively non-promiscuous. But when asked: outside of your relationship, if you could semi-anonymously go on Tinder, choose a guy you were attracted to, see that he was verified to be who he says he is, chat and receive money — as per the market rate — through the app and meet to have sex with him, would you do it?

“Yea, I would do it,” they unanimously responded.

I’ve seen the debate play out time and time again in various philosophy classes. Liberals would argue based on Mill’s Harm Principle that escorts should be allowed to do whatever they want so long as it doesn’t harm others. Paternalist arguments would concern themselves with whether all the escorts have capacity for autonomy. Legal moralist and perfectionist arguments would be concerned with the risk that too many women turn to escorting, ruin their ability to pair bond and thus ruin the nuclear family structure that is important for society. And of course, there is the religious argument that prostitution as an act is inherently wrong.

I think — with the exception of the latter — that there is merit in all of these arguments. But to me, this is no longer a question of morality. The cat’s out of the bag. With post-modernism, feminism and certain technological advancements, this is the path we’re going down. The more regulatory agencies crack down, the more initiatives such as PinkDate will pop up. And, having followed the PinkDate team for almost a half a year now, I believe we are lucky too see these particular individuals fill this space. Everything they do seems to be predicated on preventing trafficking and securing the safety and convenience of escorts. They even insure escorts against cancellations, no-shows and abusive clients. And they have set a modest transaction fee — especially considering all the rebait bonuses that are offered.

Unlike other projects in this space, they are actually designing this project based on the needs of sex workers. And they are not coat-tailing off of blockchain as a buzzword. Perhaps most importantly, they really seem to be experts on IT security. And over time, trust will be built.

Join the revolution.

If you want to invest, you can use my referral link and get a 10% bonus.

Further reading:

Whitepaper

Medium

Slack

Platform Demo