More fans, more creators, more money. For the content creator site OnlyFans, 2022 was a pretty good year. For Ethereum? Maybe not so much.
Over the weekend, Crypto Twitter zeroed in on a financial statement submitted by OnlyFans’ parent company Fenix International Limited to British authorities on Thursday. It showed that the company had owned over $19 million in Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, but its value was slashed to about $11.4 million by the end of the reporting period in November 2022.
“During this year, the group diversified part of its working capital into a cryptocurrency asset—ETH or Ethereum,” the company said in a strategic statement that opens the 48-page document. “There are no limitations or restrictions on the group's ability to sell the cryptocurrency assets. The asset has been impaired to its fair value at the year end."
Last year, OnlyFans—infamous for the many adult performers hosted on the platform—made a splash in the crypto space by announcing that creators could use verified Ethereum NFTs in their profile images. Creators who did so received an Ethereum symbol to show their ownership of the asset.
At the time, OnlyFans’ CEO Amrapali Gan said the feature—similar to one introduced for Instagram and Facebook by Meta—aimed to "empower creators to own their full potential."
"This feature is the first step in exploring the role that NFTs can play on our platform," Gan told Reuters.
Unfortunately, the company could not have anticipated the crypto bear market lurking around the corner. At the time of the NFT announcement, ETH was trading at $2,797.43, but fell to $1,298.94 by November 30 when the reporting period ended. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at $1,645.90.
Last year was a tumultuous one for cryptocurrency markets. It was marked by a cascade of failures including the collapse of Terra's UST stablecoin and governance token LUNA, the bankruptcy of crypto lender Celsius, and the implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
But apart from its ETH woes, OnlyFans enjoyed a positive 2022. According to the financial statement, the site saw the company's revenue shoot up to $5.6 billion from $4.8 billion in 2021. It also experienced a 47% increase in the number of creators on its platform, on top of a 27% increase in the total number of subscribers.