It’s not every day you get to hear about a currency partnering up with porn providers.
Crypto supporters are no strangers to receiving odd and occasionally amusing news regarding the development of its technology. For some, following Verge news could have been something of a side hobby just to mull over the developments that led the altcoin from its original status as a Dogecoin alternative to its recent partnership with Pornhub. For others, it was simply a Bitcoin alternative that offered little to established crypto enthusiasts or seemed like an outright scam. Those times have changed.
The days of DogecoinDark
Launched back in 2014, Verge currency began its life as a Dogecoin fork that promised to protect the security of its users by masking transaction traffic to further up the security potential of a currency type already geared towards privacy. At the time of its launch, the reception was lukewarm at best; Many questioned the legitimacy of the coin and whether or not it would survive beyond a few years’ time or if it was simply a pump and dump waiting to happen. After a few relatively uneventful years, a change in payment routing to IP2 brought about the re-branding to Verge.
It’s not unheard of for currencies to re-brand themselves as a simple way of raising awareness and generating excitement without much in the way of service improvement, yet Verge’s price fluctuations were mostly contained to periods of introduction to exchanges before a much later McAfee-related spike.
There’s also the issue of its purported security features that supposedly make it difficult if not absolutely impossible to track; Its current security does not offer security beyond that offered by its peers. Its current protections closely resemble DeepOnion, though its handlers have announced and missed several deadlines surrounding supposed security improvements. Given that those improvements seem to be stealth addresses, which address approximately none of the current concerns revolving around early security promises. Just as with other coins, ledgers can still be made if one takes the time to follow IP addresses as the transactions bounce between nodes.
An early midlife crisis
In a way, earlier concerns of pump and dumps came to pass after John McAfee promoted the coin during its early days, only to later retract his support after allegedly being impersonated by several unaffiliated accounts as part of an effort to raise the perceived value of the currency. Growth from before that point seems to have been mostly from new investors looking for a less established coin to invest in, along with the usual interest spike that comes with a re-branding.
The dream of a perfectly secure altcoin may still be an impossible dream as is the case with nearly any battery of security measures, but Verge has had a few very unfortunate incidents and coincidences that haven’t established the best track record. Just a few weeks before its PornHub and Brazzers partnership deal, Verge came under attack with the advent of an exploit that led to a single miner taking over 51% of the then-current mining power of Verge, overcoming its five-factor algorithms in the process.
With the capability to counterfeit a coin every second, the attacker successfully produced over 250 thousand coins before the attack ended. In response to this incident, the developers quickly pushed out a fix that accidentally led to a hard fork of the chain, a very serious move that can lead to wallet synchronisation issues and even render the coin’s old chain unusable.
Partnerships, promises and the future
PornHub posted a video with the header “The Future Has Cum” for its partnership with Verge, announced back on April 17th on PornHub’s blog and a YouTube video that has since been taken down due to content issues. It’s exactly the sort of advertising one might expect from a company centred around pornography, but the move to accept Verge is at least a tentative step towards legitimacy for a coin mired in so many glaring issues that worryingly recent.
Pornography pushing technology isn’t a new concept and adding cryptocurrency to the list of technologies that have been boosted by the industry’s adoption seems about as natural as its privacy and security advancements, especially in the realm of membership privacy and payment security. After all, currencies that boast privacy paired up with an industry that respects the privacy of its users seem to be the next logical step on the path to building goodwill.
Yet the privacy touted by Verge is suspect at best, considering a massive leak of IP addresses it suffered shortly before the hack it experienced. It’s been less than a month as of the time of this writing since Verge has undergone events that should lead most partners to shy away from jumping onboard without assurances about the state of the coin’s technology, yet delayed security updates and half-hearted responses to leaks seem to do nothing but draw investors in at unreasonable speeds.
It seems unreasonable to outright claim Verge is a scam. By all accounts, it could be a cryptocurrency with its heart in the right place while the technology and implementation of security measures around it have gone under-served. It is important to distinguish that it is not as safe as it claims to be and if you find it appealing, be sure you do your diligent research into its history and potential future before investing.
There’s potential value to be gained, but Verge cryptocurrency currently carries a similar weight to gambling with any other coin on the verge of toppling off its pedestal or reaching a level of respect. Approach it accordingly.
