It's practically a cliche to note how fast our privacy is disappearing. Ironically, the more we move online, the faster our need for privacy is increasing. Local, regional, and national governments want to regulate things that are global and work hard to use technology to impose their mores, beliefs, and regulations on the global community.
Resistance, defending yourself against the intrusions, proves difficult and often tiresome. But some companies see the opportunities, the competitive advantage in implementing technology to ensure privacy while guaranteeing secure transactions. At Anarchapulco 2018, I met a lot of individuals and companies who were taking up the challenge. My main focus at the time was researching ideas for a fiction series (Bitpats) but after talking to the people there, I realized that some of the things I learned, some of the companies I met, deserved to get wider attention.
One company that caught my attention was PinkDate. At the conference, I chatted with the president, Sarah Stevens, and learned how they were applying technology to the escort industry--matching escorts and clients, and providing an opportunity for investors as well. Although a (heavily) fictionalized account of those talks with Sarah (and others) appeared in the short story WHO OWNS YOU? (www.nomadicgiant.com) I felt it important to write seriously about the real company behind the idea.
The escort business, the arena of sex workers, has traditionally been a high-risk market, with huge variations in the legal and cultural restrictions, ranging from prostitution being legal, but frowned on, to almost every aspect of it being illegal. Transactions concerning escort services are problematic for both sides: Escorts need to verify that each new client is legitimate and has the money to pay for their services. And they need a means of connecting with them. According to PinkDate founder Brad Anderson, escorts estimate that they spend as much as 70% of their billable time just doing these things.
Clients want to know the escort is seriously offering sexual services (and what they are) and is of a legal age to do so. A client wants to be able to get verified and then be able to find the right escort, in the right location. And both sides need to be sure that the entire negotiation is serious and in good faith. Currently, for each new encounter, both sides must effectively start over, sending personal info to unknown persons, negotiating the price, and time, to come to an acceptable arrangement.
PinkDate addresses the problem by allowing a client or escort to verify their data one time over an encrypted connection. Once that is accomplished, the fact of the verification is linked to a photo, and only that is made available to other parties. That means that a verified client in New York but traveling to London could arrange a date with an escort in the destination city as easily as with one at home. The escorts can post a personal calendar to let clients know when they are available. Sarah Stevens points out that this alone saves a great deal of time for both the escort and the client. The platform uses machine learning to make it easier for a client to discover just the right escort and the automatic verification and booking functions make it easy for an escort to decide if she wants to accept a date from a particular client.
For security, PinkDate's business is web-based with no downloadable app. PinkDate is accessed over a publicly-accessible domain. The DNS resolves to a Tor2Web gateway that proxies the TCP connection to the application layer, effectively making it anonymous. The system was designed, engineered, and built as an encrypted platform, using hidden databases as well as globally-distributed servers with onboard security chips.
All of that costs money, of course, and the company will be offering an ICO of PinkDate Platform (PDP) tokens in June of this year. And here the company is taking a slightly different tack from a lot of companies using blockchain... The white paper says that: "approximately 115 million tokens will be issued and outstanding on the Ethereum blockchain using a smart contract." So although the coins will be tradeable on decentralized exchanges the token is less important as a medium of exchange, and more a method of allowing profit sharing and appreciation of shares of the company, but in a way that keeps investors anonymous. The company charges escorts 20% of each transaction, and every quarter it pays out half of the net profits to investors.
To make the platform customer friendly, clients can search the escort database (a Tinder-like process), book a date, and make their payment, securely... encrypted. Payment is made in cryptocurrencies or fiat (cash), which means that clients don't have to buy PDP tokens to book a date--often a hurdle in closed systems.
The investment in technology to make this happen, combined with researching the best ways to provide the extra-jurisdictional protection (secure servers that ensure the transactions are located outside of the jurisdiction of any government) is not only wonderful for freedom loving people, but should prove a good investment. PinkDate estimates that escorting and sex-related services total over $157B annually worldwide, with at least $10B per year in North America alone. Yet, due to the legal ramifications, there are no large national or international agencies or platforms. Currently, the majority of escorts either operate independently or work with small single-location agencies which take as much as 40% in fees.
Certainly there are risks involved in this business model, but it's a new model, and newness involves risk, and reward. The legal issues seem well considered, but governments change the ground rules regularly and as H.L. Mencken famously said: "Prediction is always difficult, especially about the future."
Years ago, when I received my first publishing contract, I paid a lawyer good money to read it. His comment was that any contract ultimately is only as good as the people involved in the agreement. And the same applies to companies. In this case, the makeup of the company is largely as anonymous as the investors, and you'll need to look at the white paper (available at https://PinkDate.is) to see if the ideas, the sentiments provide you with enough confidence to invest.
