Ivy League Grad Launches MintStars as OnlyFans Alternative

Web-Based Platform Promises Higher Payouts/Less Censorship.

It’s no secret that the banking industry is unsupportive of legal sex work, including that engaged in online. It’s not just a problem in the States, as 28-year-old UK resident Jessica Van Meir has discovered. The former Gates Cambridge scholar is researching sex worker rights at Harvard currently, and last year, with the help of Daniel Sargent, built the UK-based MintStars as a “sex-positive NFT subscription platform” alternative to OnlyFans.

Van Meir told City A.M. that she acknowledges banks are wise to show concern about trafficking and revenge porn but believes that their solution is worse than the problem. The current policies of closing PayPal and app accounts and “debanking,” which is the policy of closing bank accounts perceived as high risk, are common. MintStars, insists its female creator, is designed to protect online sex workers from financial discrimination, censorship, content theft, and low-profit payouts.

Part of what motivates her entrepreneurial friend Sargent is the fact his partner had their OnlyFans content pirated. The larger and hugely profitable platform skims an impressive 20 percent off its creators’ earnings while being accused of allowing illegal content, piracy, and abuse. Previous OnlyFans CEO Amrapali Gan insists that upgrades in 2022 have made it “truly the safest and most inclusive social media platform,” as well as holding the toughest policies to protect against site misuse.

Be that as it may, Van Meir and Sargent believe that MintStars is the superior platform for worker empowerment and prosperity. By using crypto payment rails, fans can use a regular card to pay for time with their favorite performer. That payment is converted to a stable crypto coin known as USDC and then deposited into the creators’ bank accounts. This allows MintStars to take a mere five percent of creator earnings.

“A lot of the people doing this are students or they’re mothers, and this is their livelihood,” Van Meir pointed out to City A.M. By using crypto, MintStars can charge lower fees, enforce less censorship, more frankly promote its content, provide greater security, and pay creators immediately. All without losing access to their financial institutions.

Expected to achieve more than $96 billion by 2032 according to Allied Market Research, OnlyFans has more than three million content creators with approximately 240 million fans. Its 2021 valuation was $1 billion. Still in its relative professional infancy, MintStars’ userbase is growing quickly according to Van Meir, and is currently in the low thousands with more signups daily.