Coinbase Super Bowl Ad Tells Truth About Crypto—Accidentally

One company is learning the hard way that framing can be dangerous.

Coinbase, which allows people to buy crypto products like Bitcoin, caused a stir with a Super Bowl ad disguised as a karaoke singalong. Viewers who found themselves singing along with the Backstreet Boys’ song had no idea it was an ad for a crypto company.

When the Coinbase logo popped up on the screen, many viewers responded with boos and groans. A video of this reaction went viral on social media, with people chiming in from all over the country to say that they, too, had been in rooms full of boos at Coinbase.

The company, for its part, is portraying the ad as a success. “If you're talking about it, it worked,” declared Coinbase in response to condemnation of the ad.

But the Coinbase ad may be the crypto industry's most inadvertently honest moment. The ad itself acted as a metaphor for how the crypto industry operates.

Here’s how it worked:

1. Lure people in with something fun and exciting.
2. Hide what it really is.
3. Reveal it at the end.
4. Listen to the groans.

In the crypto world, a “rug pull” is a scam in which crooks push a fake crypto “coin,” promising easy and tremendous profits. Then, the scammers “pull the rug out” from unsuspecting buyers, taking their money.

The Coinbase ad functioned as a rug pull singalong. (At least no one lost their life savings this time.)

And Coinbase is bragging about it. The company is proudly declaring that they got people to sing along—celebrating that they deceived viewers into participating in something they wouldn't have chosen knowingly.

But nobody appreciates being tricked. When your brand inspires a spontaneous outbreak of boos and groans at Super Bowl parties across the nation, you have serious problems. Ads are generally designed to make people smile, cheer, or develop positive feelings. Coinbase’s karaoke ad did the opposite.

The ad came at a moment when the price of Bitcoin has crashed—yet again—evaporating billions of dollars in customer money. This volatility has raised questions of whether people should be speculating on these imaginary digital currencies at all, given their habit of disappearing real money in exchange for fake money.

Clearly, no one at Coinbase thought too deeply about the symbolic meanings of the ad (or the low credibility of its own brand).

The framing foul: When your ad is rooted in emotional fraud, you’ve accidentally told the truth about your industry’s business model.

No one at Coinbase was cognitively aware enough to see they’d structured their big brand moment around the very critique that dogs the entire industry. Coinbase framed crypto as deception.

Sometimes the most honest thing about a company is what it brags about. And that’s a good reason to stay far away from crypto.

Further reading

Files cast light on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to cryptocurrency

Newly released documents detail convicted sex offender’s early backing of bitcoin and Coinbase

The GuardianAdam Willems

The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington Has Very Weird Beliefs

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the U.S. is in “decline” and embraces a cultish tech movement to build “network” societies beyond the reach of nation-states—and he’s got Congress eating out of his hand.

The New RepublicGil Duran