Zcash is courting adult creators. What private payments do and don't hide

I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, and this isn't legal or tax advice. It's what I found reading the primary sources before I try Zcash myself, which I'm about to do and plan to write up as I go.

Adult creators have a long-running payments problem: banks and card networks decide what we're allowed to sell, and they change their minds without asking us. A cryptocurrency called Zcash is now pitching itself as the fix, in person, on the adult expo floor. Before I put my own money into it, I wanted to know what it hides and what it doesn't.

What is Zcash?

Zcash is a cryptocurrency built for private payments. Its own site calls it "encrypted electronic cash" and says it was "the first cryptocurrency to develop zero-knowledge encryption for private peer-to-peer payments." In plain terms: you can send and receive money from your phone, with no bank in the middle, and the details of the payment can stay hidden from the public.

The coin is called ZEC. z.cash lists Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken among the exchanges where you can buy it, says fees are "usually only a few cents," and recommends three wallets: Zodl (formerly Zashi), Edge and Vizor.

What does a private Zcash payment hide?

Only one kind of Zcash payment is private, and that distinction is the whole story. Zcash has two kinds of address:

• Shielded addresses keep a payment's details encrypted. The community wiki ZecHub puts it this way: "a block explorer can show that a transaction exists, but it cannot show shielded sender, recipient, amount, or memo details."
• Transparent addresses work like Bitcoin. "Transaction details are publicly visible on the blockchain, including transparent addresses and transparent values."

So "I paid in Zcash" means nothing on its own. A payment between two shielded addresses is private. A payment that touches a transparent address is public, the way Bitcoin is, and ZecHub warns that once money lands on a transparent address, "every later movement from that address stays public too."

What doesn't it hide?

More than the marketing suggests. Three things stood out to me:

• Exchanges know who you are. Buying ZEC on Coinbase or Kraken, or cashing it out to your bank, generally means verifying your identity with them. ZecHub calls exchange withdrawals "the most common place people lose privacy," because many withdraw to transparent addresses. Its advice is to move the money into a shielded wallet as soon as it arrives.
• Private isn't untaxed. Hiding a payment from the public doesn't hide it from your obligations. The IRS puts it bluntly: "Income from digital assets is taxable." I'm not an accountant, so the useful advice is in my tax post for self-producing creators: log what you receive and what it was worth that day.
• Platforms still set their own rules. Taking Zcash happens off OnlyFans, ManyVids and the rest, and some of them ban steering fans to outside payment. YourVids' terms, for one, bar sharing "external payment links," and OnlyFans' Help Center warns that "If you try to direct Fans to make a payment outside the OnlyFans platform there is a risk your account will be deactivated." My platform rules comparison lists who allows what. Break those rules and you risk the account that pays most of your bills.

Why is Zcash showing up at adult expos?

Because a grant is funding a team to put it there. In August 2026 a group called the ZECsy Team asked Zcash Community Grants, the project's grants committee, for $550,000 to run a year of in-person outreach, September 2026 through August 2027. The committee approved it on August 31 "through Milestone 9." The grant pays out monthly, so that likely means the first nine months.

The plan covers four mainstream crypto conferences, eight weekend workshops and five adult-industry events: four Exxxotica shows plus the AEE/AVN show in Las Vegas in January. The team has already worked Exxxotica Chicago and Exxxotica in Edison, New Jersey, in October. Next on the list is Miami, December 4 to 6, where the application says the team will "host daily workshops on the conference floor." It argues the adult industry is where "financial privacy is not abstract but existential for the workers involved," and that the team demos wallet setup and a point-of-sale flow using CipherPay, a checkout tool for accepting ZEC.

Not everyone in Zcash is thrilled. Crypto press reported a split in the Zcash community after photos of the team's New Jersey booth circulated, and at least one trader said publicly they'd added to a bet against the coin after the photos circulated. That debate is the crypto community's business. For creators, the question is simpler: does it work for us?

What should fans know before paying a creator in crypto?

That crypto is one of the payments people pretending to be us ask for. Security firm Bitdefender has described impersonation scams that steer fans to Cash App, crypto or gift cards, all hard to reverse. It's why I wrote how to tell it's really me. The rule doesn't change with Zcash: only pay an address listed on the creator's own links page. Today there's no Zcash address on mine. If I add one, it will appear there first, and that post will say so.

Where I land

The pitch is fair as far as it goes. A shielded payment between two wallets is private in a way a bank transfer never is, and no card processor sits in the middle of it. But the privacy is only as good as the weakest step, the exchange in the middle knows your name, and none of it changes what you owe in tax or what your platforms allow.

I'm going to set it up myself and write it up as I go: the wallet, the first payment, what confused me, what it cost. Again, I'm not a lawyer or an accountant. If you plan to take crypto for your work, talk to a tax professional before the first payment, not after.

— Sly