This Sex Toy Seller Wants You to Spend Your Volatile Cryptocurrency on His Products

Are you stressed out about the price of bitcoin and ethereum? Perhaps masturbation could help.

That's what sex toy inventor Brian Sloan thinks anyway. His company, Very Intelligent E-Commerce, which makes innovative products such as an automatic blowjob machine called the Autoblow 2, is now accepting 20 different types of cryptocurrencies—from PotCoin to GameCredits.

The company also released several advertisements aimed at cryptocurrency fans:

"It's weird because everyone accepts bitcoin only," Sloan explained to me in a phone interview. "But that's missing so many people who hold so many currencies that they would like to be able to spend."

The idea is that letting people spend their digital currency on a sex toy could help free them from the stress of an increasingly volatile cryptocurrency market. "I've followed the news of all the cryptocurrencies," Sloan said. "The reality for people is that they may or may not make a lot of money. It really is stressful I think."

Allowing customers to pay using a digital currency also adds a level of privacy. Other forms of payment like Paypal or sites like Amazon leave what can be an undesirable paper trail for sex toy customers. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand, are designed to be anonymous and difficult to trace.

While Sloan isn't the first to accept cryptocurrency payments, he's part of a small number of adult industry companies willing to do it, partially because it's not easy for businesses to incorporate the technology.

Very Intelligent E-Commerce needs to use a processor to handle the wide variety of currencies it accepts. Although customers can choose to pay in any of the 20 cryptocurrencies, Sloan and his colleagues receive it in bitcoin. The processing service converts each type of coin for a fee.

Even with the help of a processor, Sloan told me there are many logistical hurdles associated with setting up a business to accept cryptocurrencies. For one, there's the worry that his bitcoin could get stolen by hackers. "Now I need to hold onto the [bitcoin] wallet," Sloan said. "I've never owned bitcoin before. This is like, pretty risky for someone running a physical products business." If his bitcoin somehow got stolen, or the price of bitcoin changed dramatically, there's little Sloan could do about the toys he already shipped in exchange for it.

"My normal business life doesn't have so much risk in it," Sloan explained. "It's going to be weird for my accountant."