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In the latest commercial from the virtual currency exchange Crypto.com, titled \u201cBravery Is a Process,\u201d the star basketball player Joel Embiid walks through Philadelphia while Bill Self, his former college coach, lends the narration.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when our path didn\u2019t make sense to everyone else, we kept going,\u201d Mr. Self says in the ad, which made its debut on May 6. \u201cWe keep going, until our path is the one they wish they\u2019d taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
What the ad doesn\u2019t say: The crypto market is in the middle of a meltdown<\/a>. Buyers beware.<\/p>\n Enthusiasm for crypto from Hollywood celebrities and top athletes reached a fever pitch over the past year. On social media, during interviews and even in music videos, they portrayed virtual currency as a world with its own hip culture and philosophy \u2014 one that was more inclusive than traditional finance and that involved the chance to make loads of money.<\/p>\n The Super Bowl was nicknamed the \u201cCrypto Bowl\u201d this year because so many ads \u2014 which cost as much as $7 million for 30 seconds \u2014 featured the industry, several of them starring boldface names.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But after investors watched hundreds of billions of dollars disappear in a sell-off this month, those famous boosters now face intensifying criticism that they helped drive vulnerable fans to invest in crypto without emphasizing the risks. Unlike clothes or snacks or many other products hawked by celebrities, the crypto market is volatile and rife with scams.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis is real money that people are investing,\u201d said Giovanni Compiani, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Chicago whose research has found that younger, lower-income investors tend to be overly optimistic about crypto\u2019s trajectory. \u201cThose who promote it should be more upfront about the potential downsides.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, crypto\u2019s celebrity boosters have been largely silent about whether they have any second thoughts about their promotions.<\/p>\n Crypto.com declined to make Mr. Embiid available to discuss his partnership with the company. Matt Damon, who compared the advent of virtual money to the development of aviation and spaceflight in a critically panned but widely seen Crypto.com ad last year, did not respond to requests to weigh in. No response either from the basketball star LeBron James, who was featured in the company\u2019s Super Bowl commercial this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Reese Witherspoon, an Oscar winner who declared online in December that \u201ccrypto is here to stay\u201d, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Gwyneth Paltrow, another Oscar winner, who lent her name to a Bitcoin giveaway late last year. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Paris Hilton, who has nearly 17 million <\/strong>followers on Twitter who watch her coo over her lap dogs Crypto and Ether<\/a>, didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment. Neither did several other famous crypto pushers, such as Mila Kunis, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady (although Mr. Brady\u2019s and Mr. Rodgers\u2019s profiles on Twitter still feature laser eyes<\/a>, a popular symbol of Bitcoin bullishness). A representative for Naomi Osaka, the tennis star who became an ambassador for the crypto exchange FTX<\/a> this year, wrote in an email that \u201cshe sadly is overseas and not available.\u201d<\/p>\n In FTX\u2019s Super Bowl commercial, the comedian Larry David denigrated important inventions such as the wheel and the light bulb before rejecting crypto. The ad winkingly urged viewers: \u201cDon\u2019t be like Larry.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Schaffer, the director of that Super Bowl spot, said in an email that he and Mr. David did not have a comment on the market collapse.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately I don\u2019t think we\u2019d have anything to add as we have no idea how cryptocurrency works (even after having it explained to us repeatedly), don\u2019t own it, and don\u2019t follow its market,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just set out to make a funny commercial!\u201d<\/p>\n Crypto\u2019s instability underscores a basic fallacy of celebrity marketing: A famous person\u2019s endorsement may be memorable \u2014 the actor John Houseman\u2019s spots for the Smith Barney investment firm decades ago are Madison Avenue legend \u2014 but it does not make the product being pushed inherently worth trying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis is what they do \u2014 they\u2019re celebrities, they got offered money to promote something that has promise,\u201d said Beth Egan, an associate professor of advertising at Syracuse University.<\/p>\n Bitcoin. <\/strong>A Bitcoin<\/a>\u00a0is a digital token that can be sent electronically from one user to another, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin is also the name of the payment network on which this form of digital currency is stored and moved.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Blockchain. <\/strong>A blockchain<\/a>\u00a0is a database maintained communally and that reliably stores digital information<\/a>. The original blockchain was the database on which all Bitcoin transactions were stored, but non-currency-based companies and governments are also trying to use blockchain technology to store their data.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Coinbase. <\/strong>The first major cryptocurrency company to list its shares on a U.S. stock exchange, Coinbase is a platform that allows people and companies to buy and sell various digital currencies<\/a>, including Bitcoin, for a transaction fee.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Web3. <\/strong>The name \u201cweb3\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is what some technologists call the idea of a new kind of internet service that is built using blockchain-based tokens<\/a>, replacing centralized, corporate platforms with open protocols and decentralized, community-run networks.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nRead More on the World of Cryptocurrencies<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
Expand Your Cryptocurrency Vocabulary<\/h2>\n
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