The real message of this blog post is that Stripe's revealed and stated preferences are not aligned. Their stated preference is that they sell to literally anybody. The revealed preference is that they prioritize relationships that facilitate growth over that stated preference.
It's totally rational on their part. They're actively serving the big market, and writing a blog post about how sorry they are that they're ignoring the tiny market. That's the right division of effort, and it's smart too, because many members of the tiny market will (naively) believe Stripe's stated preferences; even though absolutely all evidence is that Stripe wants, more than anything, to build a big, legal, US-based business. And that's fine.
Funny. Porn is far from being a small market online. And taking on porn related businesses doesn't mean they have to stop serving other types of businesses.
Are you sure about that? The source I’ve found [1] says it’s a ~$5B market, which is what FB makes in one quarter alone (and only one month for Google).
I wouldn't call a $5b market a "tiny, niche market" like the GP post stated.
Consider that the spikes in bitcoin are often about scandals in the news with a concerted effort by the state regulated media over the past half decade to brand bitcoin as the tool of criminals and terrorists... and still I think pretty much everybody realizes that most bitcoin users are neither criminals nor terrorists.
No, Stripe's actions make clear that they care more about building a big, profitable, us-based company than they care about facilitating these niche "problem" customers. Which is fine.
They have correctly determined that these other lines of business are worth one pandering blog post in which they pretend that there was absolutely no way for them to serve these markets (an obvious lie), and they go about their business.
It's a smart play. I hope I'd make the same play, if I were in their shoes. Build profitable products for the big market, write a blog post for the tiny one. And maybe, someday, once the big market is sufficiently secure, add the incremental revenue from the tiny market.
The kind of agnosticism described in the first paragraph might mean, in a sane world, that a company like Stripe makes no assessment over whether a company's practices are legal or illegal, leaving this to the government to act upon alone.