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Ah, “Bass is for everyone.” If you’ve never heard of it before, catch up with this story right away.
This is the hot take: the bass is not sexy.
Jesse Pollack, the head of Coinbase Base and Coinbase wallet, has been posted midway since the base was pumped, dumped, and fired a “content coin” again pumped. The first was “The base is for everyone.” It is a seemingly purposeless token other than promoting the idea that everyone should token everything for profit. Fansy.
One Pollak in Pollak’s post, which contains GIFs full of various phrases, was declared, among other things, “base is for pumping”, while another claimed that “base is for squirting.” These two in particular caused a stir on Crypto Twitter.
Both have shocking value. It’s also a bit strange to say. In response to one post on the latter statement, Pollak said “provocative artists” should be respected. In another reply, he said that if someone launches “the only better fan of bass”, he would love it.
But Coinbase, the company behind Base, is not for everyone.
As some have pointed out, Pollack’s hopes for base-based only fans are ironic in consideration of blocking Coinbase’s current terminology from using Coinbase that does business around “sexually related services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per-view, or (or) adult live chat functionality.”
Only fans include pay-per-view and chat features, so only fans and creators who create similar content independently or on other platforms are prohibited from using Coinbase.
Coinbase prohibits sex work without distinguishing between any kind of sexually suggestive work and sex work, focusing on whd-only photos with illegal activities in most states.
When I posted about this, many replies did not deny that Coinbase was doing this. But they tried to debate “this is a blockchain.” This means that sex workers can find other ways to use bases, whilst avoiding Coinbase, the company that created it.
But is that a world we really want to live in? What if sex workers are publicly and superficially promoted when using blockchain and are embarrassed or restricted to try to on or off cash?
The head of the base, People who work at Base CoinbaseSex workers say they should come to the base, ignoring Coinbase rules and ignoring Coinbase rules for making Coinbase use itself.
In 2022, CNBC discovered that it had banned sex workers from its platform, at least as early as 2016. Coinbase told the news outlet in 2022 that its terms of use are “commerce or retail services related to adult content.”
All of this is tied to a bigger problem. Crypto will become like the big bank that once sneered as he resigned to Wall Street in hopes of “large recruitment” and better (or at least clear) regulations.
Crypto was advertised as one of the few promised payment methods, along with the cash that sex workers can actually use. But it failed to meet that promise.
“Generally speaking, women aren’t furious about the foundations that can bring adult content on-chain. Adult service workers are more punk and anti-establishment than most people in Crypto,” Coinfund’s Comms and Marketing Jules Mossler wrote in X.
“To be taken seriously is to have a good taste. There is a way of thinking that some art is cheap: gloss-out humor, useless nude, an over-cursing curse of shock value. If you use sex in marketing, it’s not really a substitute for anyone. That potch plays a central role in sex trafficking and women’s exploitation.”
Pollack later posted an apology for the “base is for pimping” part of his previous post.
“This morning, I posted a piece of art someone had created. It said (in many phrases) “The base is for pumping.” Be 100% clear: This was created by creators I wanted to support (not me or base marketing). It was one phrase among many, but this was (sic) mistake and I apologized,” he said, “I will be especially unimagining to support provocative art, by supporting provocative art.
In response to comment, a Coinbase spokesperson did not respond to my question as to why the company is engaged in legal sex work from Coinbase.
