We are a circus; come into our circus. You can earn tokens while you’re inside, and you can buy tokens, and come into our platform and use your tokens to buy goods and services within our platform. But when you leave, the value of the token stays within the platform.

Stuart Duncan, CEO, Vice Industry Token

In a previous article, it was announced that Vice Industry Token (VIT) was looking to combine porn watching with cryptocurrency payments made with the company’s native VIT token, which is currently valued at US$0.03.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with VIT’s CEO, Stuart Duncan, about why a coin’s utility is significant for investment purposes.

What Is Vice Industry Token?

Functioning as an “attention economy token”, VIT seeks to bring both network providers and viewers into its blockchain platform, and pay them for their content and viewership, respectively. From an industry standpoint, this seems groundbreaking, as it provides networks with the ability to hone in on what their investors are watching and ensure that similar content is created, while paying investors/viewers to come back to the platform and allowing them to use the token to purchase goods and services from within the platform.

“We wanted to generate success for video creators and pay viewers who wanted to watch and engage with a blockchain that pays for their input,” said Duncan. Unlike Steemit, where bloggers are paid to blog, this is the first time that viewers are paid to view, and content creators are paid to create. It’s a win-win.

Duncan’s company seems to have changed the traditional token structure by bringing investors into the platform, generating a token, paying people to watch TV and video content, and allowing investors to use the token to purchase goods and services inside the network from VIT’s network partners or anyone else using or powered by VIT.

The CEO compared this platform to a circus, noting that when one leaves, the token has no value. But when one comes back, it has value again and is freely tradable within the platform.

“We call ourselves a ‘vice industry token’ because we are also looking at the cannabis industry, gaming industries, spreading far beyond adult,” said Duncan.

What Should You As An Investor Be Looking At?

You can have the greatest whitepaper in the world, but if there is no way to execute the token, or any utility to it, then it is essentially a nice stack of papers to throw in the air and pick back up again.

Since the emergence of crypto, the mainstream media has begun to pick it up in a big way. The initial mania phase quickly turned to a general shitstorm, and those involved in crypto were warned to take caution by people involved in the traditional areas of finance and banking.

“Yet, while this is going on, I would tell younger investors, that [they’re] the generation that may have created this,” said Duncan. We don’t know who the person was behind it, and it’s only been around since 2009. I would buy and stay idle. It’s a great thing to find utility that crosses global borders.”

Finding Your “Utility”

Duncan’s vision of “mass utility” is what all creators of currencies should be considering. When you buy just to buy, and do not understand what you’re investing in, that’s problematic. “I always ask what the direct relationship is between the company and the currency,” said Duncan.

For example, take Ripple: what is the direct relationship between the company and its crypto and what they are doing with other banks? There’s a bit of a disconnect there. That isn’t a utility token. It’s a straight-up token.

VIT is all about mass utility. It’s a token with potentially hundreds of millions of viewers across adult sites. If a company could create a mass utility that big, they in turn are afforded the chance to learn about those users and their viewing patterns.

Do Your Homework

But at the end of the day, investors need to do their own research. Ask yourself what investing in a particular token or coin means for you. “If I buy this token, what does it do for me?” If it doesn’t do anything for you, maybe you shouldn’t be looking to buy it, because there may not be any practical use for it at all.

Read more about VIT and its latest network partner, Penthouse Magazine, bringing cryptocurrency into its erotic pages.