by Jan Michael Carpo, Reporter
During a Super Bowl broadcast held earlier this year, an advertisement that featured a bouncing QR code and the promise of free Bitcoin had caused so much traffic that its sponsor’s app crashed.
“Now that we have your attention, we’d like to announce that we’re giving away $15 in BTC to anyone who joins Coinbase by 2/15. Click below for more info and RT to tell your friends,” read the ad sponsored by Coinbase Global, Inc. (COIN), a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency.
Even though the Coinbase outage only lasted a few minutes, it still caused the stock price of the company to drop by as much as 5% before the start of trade. Nevertheless, Coinbase’s stock rose as high as 3.8% in the morning trade before settling back to a gain of about 1.7% by mid-morning.
Coinbase’s stock had opened at $193.49, only slightly below its previous finish of $194.53.
Crypto ad’s first time at Super Bowl
Coinbase has just made its Super Bowl debut with a clever, bouncing QR code which might have become too popular that it had caused the app to crash.
The sponsored advertisement ran for a full 60 seconds and included a vibrant, bouncing QR code.
When scanned, the QR code would take visitors to a promotional website where they could sign up and receive a limited-time-only promotional value of $15 worth of Bitcoin as part of the ad’s “Less talk, more Bitcoin” campaign theme.
Coinbase is currently down, presumably due to the massive influx of traffic from the clever ad.
While it is still down, the app’s screen read: “Well, that was more popular than we imagined. We needed a quick time out. But don’t worry, we’ll email you when things get back to normal.”
On its website, the crypto app says its aim is to build an open financial system for the world.
Making fun of the Coinbase ad
During the 2022 Super Bowl, other crypto-related businesses also advertised themselves, their goods, and their various initiatives. FTX Exchange and Crypto.com were just some of them.
One of the businesses that chose to make fun of Coinbase at that time was Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as “Facebook Inc.” and “The Facebook Inc.” An American multinational technology conglomerate based in California, the company currently owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other products and services.
Meta is one of the world’s most valuable companies and is considered to be one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
After the Coinbase commercial had aired, Meta’s Quest account also tweeted its own bouncing QR code which links to an after-game virtual reality (VR) afterparty that has already been scheduled and features the Foo Fighters.
“Hopefully, this doesn’t break,” the tweet said.