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

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors flat on the day, BTC at $68,600
• Tempo hires Farcaster cofounders, adds to their deep talent bench
• Mr. Beast acquires teen-focused banking app Step
• Jump Trading to earn equity stakes in Polymarket & Kalshi
• MegaETH launches its mainnet, debuts “The Rabbit Hole” hub

🔵 Coinbase Was Crypto’s Only Super Bowl Ad—And Watch Parties Booed

Coinbase was the lone crypto company with a Super Bowl ad.

And the crowd… was not entirely on board.

📌 What Happened

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.

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.

Coinbase leaned in. When one user called the ad “terrible,” the company’s official X account responded: “If you’re talking about it, it worked. Crypto is for everybody.”

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.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

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.”

🧠 Why It Matters

Let’s zoom out.

In 2022, crypto companies flooded the Super Bowl—FTX had Larry David, Crypto.com had Matt Damon telling you fortune favors the brave, and Coinbase’s floating QR code crashed its servers with 20 million hits in one minute.

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.

Crypto clearly has an image problem with retail, one likely made worse during the Trump administration (and the Trump meme coin debacle).

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…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mostly flat; BTC -1% at $68.6K; ETH -1% at $2,010; SOL even at $84; XRP even at ~$1.40
• STABLE (+20%), H (+7%) and ASTER (+5%) led top movers
• ZRO briefly jumped 20% before selling off, amidst speculation of launching its own chain
• Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan joined Stripe’s Tempo, calling stablecoins a “generational opportunity”
• Tether invested $150M in Gold.com for a ~12% stake; Tether’s gold stash now tops $23B (148+ tonnes), making it a top-30 global gold holder per Jefferies
• MrBeast’s Beast Industries acquired Step, a teen-focused banking app backed by Stephen Curry and Justin Timberlake
• Logan Paul faked a $1 million Polymarket bet during the Super Bowl
• Polymarket sued Massachusetts in federal court, arguing only the CFTC has jurisdiction over prediction markets; meanwhile Kalshi sports markets face a 30-day geofence deadline
• It’s a big week ahead for macro: Delayed nonfarm payrolls Wednesday, Coinbase earnings Thursday, Robinhood earnings Friday, and CPI on Friday

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The BTC ETFs saw another $145M in net inflows on Monday while the ETH ETFs saw $57M
• Strategy bought 1,142 BTC for $90M at avg $78,815 per coin; total holdings now 714,644 BTC (~3.4% of supply) at a $76,056 avg cost basis
• BitMine (BMNR) continued loading up on ETH during the crash, adding another

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme majors were mostly flat; DOGE -1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP -1%, FARTCOIN +1%
• BNKR rallied another 30% after deploying its new launchpad with better fees for agents and more revenue streams for the protocol
• GIRAFFES was the runner of the night on Solana, jumping 96x to $4M; MOLTEN was the top mover on Base, up 17x to $3.5M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Jump Trading will earn equity stakes in both Polymarket and Kalshi in exchange for providing market-making liquidity
• MegaETH launched its mainnet and ecosystem hub “The Rabbit Hole”
• BackPack Exchange is reportedly raising $50M at a $1B valuation ahead of its expected TGE
• ENS Labs scrapped its Namechain L2, will deploy ENSv2 exclusively on Ethereum mainnet
• Kinetiq announced the launch of perps dot fun, allowing anyone to launch a perps market

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks even at 29.9 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 4.4 ETH, BAYC -3% at 6.2 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 445 HYPE
• Cyberkongz (+10%) and Kodas (+10%) led notable movers