Dominatrix Earns $1 Million Mining Cryptocurrency, The New Findom Trend

A Paris-based financial dominatrix who calls herself Theodora trains fetish clients to mine cryptocurrency for her and now owns more than $1 million in digital currency.

She offers a mining plugin on her website, similar to the technology hackers often use to trick internet users into unwittingly contributing computing power to mining cryptocurrency. For example, last Friday Reuters reported the Russian oil giant Transneft found unauthorized software mining monero cryptocurrency with company computers. Pirate Bay and Showtime found comparable mining malware on their websites.

Now Theodora is proving sex workers can use the same technology for transparent, consensual fetish play. She told International Business Times she has a dozen regular clients who constantly mine for her, plus many anonymous clients mining through her website as well. This week a surge of around 2,000 clients mined cryptocurrency for her.

“The reason cryptocurrency is so popular among sex workers is because in so many countries, if you try to get payments in a clean way they will ban sex workers. You can’t use PayPal because they don’t support the adult industry,” she told IBT. “With cryptocurrency there are no chargebacks.”

Some of her more tech-savvy clients set up cryptocurrency mining rigs in their home as well. “They mine from their home 24/7,” she said. “I make more out of this equipment than the website...this website is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Findom, the fetish that involves BDSM roleplay through financial transactions, humiliation or gifts, is now one of the ways sex workers and prospective clients teach each other about cryptocurrency. Financial dominatrixes often budget their clients' money online or assign them specific tasks related to money, which they can monitor virtually. So commanding a client learns how to accomplish a challenging or costly feat is a perfect fit for the findom community.

Such was the case with Theodora. She first learned about cryptocurrency a few years ago from a client who sent her a gift of bitcoin. Since then, she learned about blockchain technologies from clients and now teaches curious clients who never worked with bitcoin before how to buy, send, store and mine cryptocurrency.

Monero is Theodora’s favorite cryptocurrency because it is one of the easiest tokens to mine plus unique privacy features, which she said is crucial for sex workers. “Even for submissives, the privacy of it is very appealing. My clients are high profile businessmen, CEOs, even politicians, so the privacy aspect is very important for them.” According to CoinMarketCap, monero currently costs around $400 per token and has a global market cap over $6.2 billion.

Theodora may be the first financial dominatrix to garner an international reputation for cryptocurrency mining, but she isn’t alone. Several others are also setting up mining opportunities for clients, such as a woman who goes by Princess Shimmy. Many sex workers around the world are now working with cryptocurrency for both virtual roleplay and payments for more traditional services such as escorting. It's now commonplace to see financial dominatrixes advertising their preference for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

To set herself apart, Theodora continues to experiment with different ways to use cryptocurrency transactions as a form of fetish play. “It’s sexual for my clients... and as with everything sexual you need to be creative,” she said. “Now you see in the scene, especially the sex workers’ scene, people are interested in bitcoin.”

She has become an adamant believer in hodling and keeping digital loot in cold storage. “It has to be really well encrypted and protected,” she said. While many skeptics worry about price bubbles, Theodora sees temporary dips as an opportunity.

“Now is the time to, not cash out, but to invest in smaller currencies... such as litecoin. Even though it might seem to you that it’s not growing that fast, in the long run it might prove interesting,” she said. “I’ve seen this with bitcoin. I know it is going to grow. Now is the right time to actually invest in it.”