Morning Minute: More Boos Than Cheers for Coinbase Super Bowl Ad

GM!

Today’s top news:

And the crowd... was not entirely on board.

Coinbase ran a 60-second spot during Super Bowl LX that looked nothing like a typical Super Bowl ad (and “tricked” a lot of viewers).

Karaoke-style lyrics from the Backstreet Boys’ 1997 hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” scrolled across the screen in lo-fi graphics, mimicking a karaoke bar.

Singing > watching.

So we got millions of people watching the Big Game to sing along with us.

Meanwhile, the lyrics were subtly rewritten to weave in Coinbase messaging ("am I Original… am I Secure… am I for Everyone"), and the ad closed with a pivot to the Coinbase logo alone on screen.

The reaction was immediately polarizing.

Multiple videos surfaced on X showing watch party crowds happily singing along to the Backstreet Boys—then audibly booing and groaning the moment Coinbase’s branding appeared on screen.

One viral clip showed an entire room go from a full singalong to dead silence in seconds.

Meanwhile, ARK Invest was quite literally selling its Coinbase position. Cathie Wood’s firm dumped over $22M in COIN shares across multiple ETFs on Thursday and Friday.

Maybe they saw the ad in advance.

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO: “Turning 100M+ screens into karaoke, so the whole U.S. (and many around the world) can sing in unison, is an antidote to polarization and just plain fun. Everybody deserves economic freedom.”

Cat Ferdon, Coinbase CMO: “We’re really trying to effectively use this as the world’s biggest singalong, to show that crypto isn’t just for techies, but really for anyone who knows the lyrics.”

Let’s zoom out.

Fast forward to 2026 and Coinbase is the only one left standing.

But the lone crypto ad isn’t the problem here.

The problem is the reaction from retail.

From jovial singing and laughing to loud boos at the site of Coinbase and/or crypto?

That’s not a great sign for retail coming back any time soon.

And with gold & silver + several sectors of the stock market outperforming crypto in 2025, there’s a real question out there as to why retail should care / come back to crypto.

Unfortunately, as strong of a value prop as “economic freedom” delivers, it’s not one that’s resonating with mainstream in the U.S. And why would it? This cohort isn’t being persecuted and doesn’t need that use case (and let’s hope it doesn’t ever).

It seems we need to find the new messaging beyond economic freedom to get retail back on.

And solve crypto’s branding problem once and for all…