As our family gathered around the warm glow of the television yesterday to watch the Superbowl, the thing I noticed more than anything else was that there were some clear signs that we have reached some kind of critical mass in the “Cryptocurrency Goes Mainstream” process.
In the course of the broadcast — at least here in our part of the world (Seattle/King County, Washington) — I noticed no less than four separate Super Bowl ads related to cryptocurrency, as well as an additional ad that included cryptocurrency ”in context.”
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I'm sure lots of people were somewhat mystified by Coinbase’s Superbowl ad, which amounted to little more than a slowly bouncing QR code — in finest 1990s screensaver fashion — for 30 seconds, and given that it was actually somewhat hard to capture I have to wonder how wise an outlay of $6 million that might have been.
Similarly, I'm sure the skeptics of the world took one look at that and said ”Yeah, AS IF I'm going to scan that without knowing where it leads! What if it's just a phishing attempt?” Still, it was a prominent advertisement for a cryptocurrency related product. Allegedly, Coinbase's website traffic increased tenfold.
We also got to see an ad for FTX, featuring actor Larry David, as well as ads from Etoro and Bitbuy.
The significant thing about all this is that the saturation was similar to what you might get for fast food, or movies, or automobiles, each of which are about as mainstream as it gets.
The one ad some people perhaps missed is what you might call a "second layer" crypto reference in which one of a number of potentially challenging customers considering an accounting service was somebody who is a "full time cryptocurrency trader."
Regardless of whether you actually watched the Super bowl and looked at the commercials, I did find it interesting to see just how much crypto is becoming part of the culture.
It's something I last watched unfold right after the year 2000 when eBay was becoming a household concept, and one day I suddenly realized that two-thirds of the people in the line at my local post office were there to either pick up their eBay purchases or mail things they'd sold on eBay. Not long after that, I heard eBay being used as a verb for the first time: "I found something weird at the flea market, I think I'll eBay that!"
Seems to me that we have just about reached that kind of tipping point with respect to cryptocurrency... it's no longer the domain of fringe-dwelling nerds.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 20220215 01:15 PST
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