43-Year-Old OnlyFans Helmsman Passes Away, He Once Bought ETH onto the Company's Balance Sheet

Original Author: Ma He, Foresight News

On March 23, Leonid Radvinsky, the actual controller of OnlyFans, passed away after a long battle with cancer at the age of 43. An OnlyFans company spokesperson simply stated he "passed away peacefully" and requested that the public respect the family's privacy.

OnlyFans is a content subscription platform headquartered in London, UK. Creators upload exclusive content, and fans pay a monthly subscription fee. While it is centered around adult content creators, it also covers areas like fitness, music, and cooking. According to the latest 2025 data, OnlyFans user accounts have stabilized at around 377.5 million, and the number of creators has grown to 4.63 million. Currently, OnlyFans is valued at approximately $18 billion, making it the highest-valued private company among global subscription-based creator economy platforms.

Radvinsky was a Ukrainian-American who rarely made public appearances. However, in 2018, he purchased a 75% stake in OnlyFans' parent company, transforming a small UK-based startup into a cash cow with annual transaction volumes exceeding $6 billion. When he took control of OnlyFans in 2018, the platform was essentially a "paid Instagram" started by Tim Stokely and his family with a £10,000 loan. After Radvinsky's significant acquisition, he decisively steered the platform towards adult content. During the pandemic, the user base exploded, and in 2024 alone, he took home over $700 million in dividends.

Little is known publicly about Radvinsky's stance on crypto—he never publicly endorsed any blockchain but did explore the crypto world.

Bought Millions in ETH, Also Donated to Ukraine DAO

During his controlling ownership, OnlyFans quietly launched a small feature in February 2022: support for Ethereum-verified NFTs as profile pictures. The platform explicitly stated this was "the first step in exploring the role of NFTs on the platform." Creators' NFT profile pictures would feature a small Ethereum icon, and clicking on it would redirect to OpenSea for details.

This seemingly minor feature gave millions of adult content creators their first direct exposure to crypto assets.

This move was made early. That year, the NFT frenzy was at its peak, with Twitter introducing NFT profile pictures, and OnlyFans followed suit quickly.

What is less known is that OnlyFans' parent company, Fenix International, also purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of ETH.

According to the company's financial statements from the end of November 2022, Fenix purchased a total of approximately $19.9 million worth of ETH, classifying it as an intangible asset. Due to the cryptocurrency market crash in 2022, which saw Ethereum's price plummet significantly, the company recorded an impairment loss of about $8.46 million that year, adjusting the carrying value of its ETH holdings to approximately $11.4 million.

The OnlyFans platform has not yet opened up crypto payments; users still rely on credit cards or third-party virtual cards. During the Radvinsky era, OnlyFans resembled more of a hybrid of "traditional finance + adult content," taking a 20% cut with terrifyingly stable cash flow.

Shifting focus to the Russia-Ukraine war period in 2022, a group of cryptocurrency activists and enthusiasts quickly mobilized to support Ukraine.

Their method was to auction an NFT artwork depicting the Ukrainian flag. The decentralized autonomous organization "Ukraine DAO" raised 2,258 ETH in an auction, worth approximately $6.79 million at the time.

According to a subsequent report by Decrypt, the adult website OnlyFans also participated in this donation.

Blockchain tracking platform Etherscan shows that on February 27, an address named only.eth donated 500 ETH to the Ukraine DAO, which is now worth $1.079 million.

Zapper data indicates that the only.eth address was created in May 2021. Currently, its total wallet value is less than $2,000, and its last wallet transfer activity was 3 years ago.

However, the person who truly brought the OnlyFans DNA into crypto is its founder, Tim Stokely.

Stokely founded the OnlyFans platform in 2016 and resigned as CEO in December 2021, making a complete exit. In May 2022, he, along with former OnlyFans executive RJ Phillips, launched Zoop—an NFT trading card platform built on the Polygon blockchain.

Zoop is positioned as completely "family-friendly": selling 3D digital collectible cards of celebrities and influencers. Users can buy, sell, trade, collect, and receive airdropped benefits. It features limited releases and emphasizes creator revenue sharing. Essentially, Zoop transplants OnlyFans' "fans pay creators directly" model into the Web3 collectibles track.

In April 2025, Zoop, in partnership with the HBAR Foundation (the treasury management entity for the Hedera blockchain), submitted a bid to acquire TikTok's US operations. The core of the proposal was Web3 integration: Hedera's scalability would be used to underpin TikTok's NFTs, creator payments, governance structure, and overall token incentive system, with the goal of distributing 80% of advertising revenue directly to creators and users.

Ultimately, for various reasons, this intended bid did not materialize into a final deal. Tim Stokely stepped away from the adult empire but carried its core logic into Zoop and the Hedera-backed TikTok bid, effectively upgrading the "fans pay for content" model into a Web3 version.