On October 28, 2021, television audiences around the world were left collectively confused by a vague commercial for a vague cryptocurrency company in which a bunch of vague moments in history were strung together to convince viewers to buy crypto.
No particular reason, benefit or value was presented in the ad. Pardon my French, but the pitch wasn't much more than, "come on… don't be a pussy… just buy some crypto."
You already know the ad I'm talking about. It's the Matt Damon "fortune favors the brave" ad for Crypto.com which was unavoidable for a few weeks at the end of 2021.
In the commercial, Matt Damon walks around a fictional "Museum of Bravery" spewing a bunch of word salad phrases to describe "mere mortals" who "embrace the moment" in "moments of truth" as they "peer over the edge."
Here's the ad in case you need a refresher:
On October 28, 2021, the day this ad was unleashed, the price of Bitcoin was…
$60,608
Just ten days later, on November 8, the price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high of…
$68,990
As I type this article, the price of Bitcoin is…
$22,354
Let's imagine a person watching TV in the weeks after this commercial debuted. During those weeks, not only is this person being inundated with this as part of a reported $100 million Crypto.com branding campaign, on November 16 he learns that Crypto.com is paying $700 million to buy the naming rights to the Staples Center.
If this person decided to buy some bitcoin while this promotional blitz was unfolding, as of this writing his investment is down roughly…
67%
Or, as Twitter user @HighyieldHarry put it:
Matt Damon after telling me to put my life savings into PonziScamCoin pic.twitter.com/k17bA02GUZ
— High Yield Harry (@HighyieldHarry) January 3, 2022
The questions everyone is dying to know are:
a) How much was Matt Damon paid to star in his ad?
and
b) Was he paid in crypto or USD?
Focusing on the second question. If Matt was paid in crypto, at least he is feeling the pain just as much as his "brave" followers. Though, unlike his followers, Matt Damon has a $170 million net worth to cushion a 70% fall in one investment.
If he was actually paid in USD, this situation feels icky. Borderline unethical or immoral. It would mean Matt Damon leveraged his credibility and likability to dare a bunch of regular Joes to buy an extremely risky unregulated imaginary asset that, in my opinion, has no actual value or function.
To quote Matt in "Good Will Hunting": How do we like them apples? We don't like them. These apples suck. You sell bad apples, Matt Damon.
As a parting thought, today the stock market officially entered "bear" territory, we are almost certainly in a recession and may have been in a recession for several months already. These are scary, uncertain times. And we are probably just getting started. There's a lot of chatter about the Celsius crypto token going bust in the next 24-72 hours. Dozens, maybe hundreds of shitcoins, are about to get flushed. The majority of last year's SPAC stocks are flops, with 60-80% drops in their share price.
This feels a lot like the early days of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2008, investment banks and mortgage lenders propped up the real estate and stock market with a bunch of extremely risky, difficult-to-comprehend financial shenanigans. Lots of people lost their homes and their life savings. If you want to know more about the 2008 financial crisis, I highly recommend a documentary from 2010 called "Inside Job." It is riveting. And it is narrated by…
Matt Damon.
