Ad sales favor the brave
Assuming the brave have lots of money, I mean
All right, let’s take a day off from talking about the MLB owners — they’re horrible oh dear lord they are just absolutely abysmal people, the scum of the earth, miserable wretches leeching off productive members of society and demanding the public thank them for it, inarguably contemptible refuse trying to drag down no no I’m not doing this today I have to stop now or I never will — and instead go somewhere else.
Let’s get away from watching those in power try to play us for fools. Let’s get away from watching the rich sell the rest of us a bill of goods that is so patently rotten that you wonder how they could talk a single person into it. Let’s get away from these living symbols of a decadent, decaying society.
Let’s talk about crypto.
Aw, shit.
On Sunday, the most prominent professional American football league, called the National Football League, held its championship game, quaintly dubbed the “Super Bowl.” During this game, many companies displayed advertisements for their products and/or services, including Budweiser, Doritos, and at least three other classic American brands.
This year, though, the new twist was ads for cryptocurrency exchanges. Multiple ads, for multiple exchanges. One went minimalist, with a QR code bouncing around your TV like a screensaver. A couple had celebrities, one with Larry David and one with LeBron James. There is another one that, even though I’ve read multiple descriptions of it multiple times, I have no memory or understanding of.
Even with that particular ad being opaque, at least without watching it again which I am absolutely not going to do, the message is clear:
CRYPTO
Buy crypto. Invest in crypto. Become a Crypto Guy or Gal or Gender Neutral Person. Talk about crypto. Believe in crypto. Choose crypto. Let the crypto into your soul Feel the crypto within you. Be crypto-brave. Be crypto-heroic. Take crypto-risks. Get crypto-rewards. Choose crypto, as Ewan McGregor would no doubt have said if Trainspotting 2 had come out just a few years later.
The problem is that cryptocurrency isn’t actually worth anything. Well, no, I guess that’s not true. Cryptocurrency is worth what people are willing to pay for it, like any commodity. But unlike a commodity, it’s not useful in itself and therefore has no inherent value.
It’s like money, then, right? But unlike money, it’s not backed by any entity. This is an inherent, unchangeable part of the design. This means that while a US dollar is guaranteed by the government and social structures and military of the United States, one Bitcoin is guaranteed by the social structures of Online. And folks, those social structures are real fickle.
Or, to put it another way:
People are trying very hard to get you to put your money into crypto. To "invest,” they say, even though it’s not really an investment. An investment changes the thing you put it into. If you invest $1 million into new computers for your business, you expect to generate more than $1 million in productivity out of that investment. That is not happening with crypto. You are just investing hoping that the price will go up.
Speculation is the word for it. Inflating a bubble is the term. People are propping up the price of an inherently valueless thing because they think the price will continue to go up and they will make money on it.
Here’s what one digital preservationist said about it in a presentation:
the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions between real entities are for trading and speculative purposes
...
exchanges play a central role in the Bitcoin system. They explain 75% of real Bitcoin volume
...
Our results do not support the idea that the high valuation of cryptocurrencies is based on the demand from illegal transactions. Instead, they suggest that the majority of Bitcoin transactions is linked to speculation.
There are no dividends coming out of cryptocurrency, no profits to be made by the product itself. There is just the hope that the product will be worth more tomorrow than it is today, and the only reason that would happen is if, hey, look at that, a bunch of people buy in. Maybe a bunch of people who perhaps just saw some commercials during the Super Bowl and thought, yeah, I’m gonna go for it.
Or, to put it another way:
They’re trying to get someone else on the bike while they let the air out of the tires. Why would they do that when there’s freely available air all around them? What are you, the Metaphor Police? Leave me alone.
The goal of the crypto ads is not to encourage you, the viewer to make money. The point is to allow the people behind the ads to reap the enormous paper profits by getting many different viewers to each buy a little bit. Then the people with lots of Bitcoin (or Ethereum or whichever specific coin it is) can sell it off little by little at full price, getting out before it tanks when people realize it’s inherently worthless.
The fact that all of this money went into Super Bowl ads to sell crypto is…not encouraging. It’s a bubble that’s going to burst and hurt a lot of people, and we as a society will learn nothing from it.
Or, to put it another way:
Even putting aside the massive environmental damage that coin mining does — we don’t have time to get into it so stop asking!!! — this is a bad use of money. It doesn’t make sense to get involved in this, no matter how many celebs tell you that they’ll think you’re cool if you do. These ads will be very dated very fast, and the future will see them as a sign of our irrational exuberance over bullshit.
It’s not worth anything, is the takeaway. It just isn’t. All cryptocurrencies are subject to the whims of the Internet, which has some whims that you don’t want to be subjected to. So stay away. Stay far away. Stay as far as you can away.
Unless FTX throws me a few million dollars, in which case, hey man, if Larry David doesn’t need pride then I don’t either.