Celebrity hosts Larry David and LeBron James had advocated and advertised cryptocurrency during the super bowl, but a burning question remained.

Do both comedy hosts have enough knowledge about the technology to advocate it to the masses?

David was the first to pop up in an ad for FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that deals with blockchains and the internet. The commercial depicted David as a time-traveling skeptic, dismissing brilliant innovations like the wheel and electricity before rejecting Crypto. “Don’t Be Like Larry,” the slogan reads. The ad included a crypto giveaway, which perplexed everyone at home. Sorry, but Larry David starring in a crypto ad feels like the beginning of the end. It’s the type of thing we’d expect to see in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, not in real life.

finding out that larry david did a crypto ad pic.twitter.com/uClYrbjDlP

— Jared Gilman (@realJaredGilman) February 14, 2022

 

The commercial will be debated on Twitter for days, but one thing we can all agree on is that David has no idea what bitcoin is. And while crypto-ignorance can be typically condoned, if you’re selling something to millions of people, you may as well know what it is.

Then there was James, who starred in a Crypto.com advertisement with his 2003 self. Aside from the dubious usage of Young Luke Skywalker technology, the commercial is rather basic, contrasting James’ NBA career with an alleged crypto fortune.

This advertisement is accompanied by a full social media attack, including a digital rendition of James’ bedroom from 2003. Now, unlike David, James is likely to have an excellent understanding of bitcoin or, at the very least, his people do, right?

The biggest names in crypto advertising this year were James and David and Matt Damon’s crypto ad in a much lesser capacity, but they weren’t the only ones to air during the Big Game. There were a few non-celebrity advertisements, such as the one for Coinbase, which featured a QR code floating around the screen like a screensaver. In their Super Bowl ads, other businesses included some “easter egg” NFT and crypto tie-ins.

With all of these crypto advertising and Paris Hilton giving out NFTs on The Tonight Show, it appears that no celebrity is immune to the crypto sponsorship-con. The only question is, who will be the next?