Matt Damon’s Crypto.com Ad — What Could Go Wrong?

Remember the Matt Damon endorsement for Crypto.com? They spent upwards of $100 million to encourage people to invest into crypto without fear — at the height of the 2021 bull run in October. Let’s remember how it was and why the ad met so much hate in the crypto community.

The ad saw the “Good Will Hunting” and “Saving Private Ryan” star who equated buying crypto to the greatest achievements of mankind — discovering the world, exploring space. The video closed with the tagline, “Fortune favors the brave”.

This, at a time when Bitcoin was pushing near its all-time high, stood along with the greatest achievements of mankind throughout history — involving no less than the man who played Jason Bourne flogging crypto to the enthralled masses.

Back then, minting NFTs and buying different cryptocurrencies were at par with the discovery of penicillin — a great event, meant to change millions of lives. However, this was partially true, both crypto and blockchain technology are being implemented into the reality with lightning speed. 

The underlying premise of the ad was loud and clear: the moon mission was about to launch, and if you wanted a first-row seat to the promised citadel of crypto, you just had to book your seat right this instant.

It was a time when “to the moon,” “we’re all gonna make it,” and “number go up” were chanted like mantras. However, a short time after, the audience could interpret these words as “have fun staying poor”. That’s eventually what happened to people who followed Matt Damon’s advice. 

Why so? The problem is that on the day this ad was published, BTC, the most famous cryptocurrency, was trading at $60,608 per coin. At the moment this article is written, 1 Bitcoin price is $17,867. If you bought $1,000 worth of Bitcoin pushing towards all-time highs, and held all the way to this very day, you’d have somewhere around $294.

The ad was roundly tarred and feathered across cyberspace and social media as being completely out of touch from the reality of crypto. Later, Crypto.com decided to hide it from their YouTube channel. Obviously, the campaign was unsuccessful, giving the straight advice to invest while the market was more volatile than usual.    

Also, the phrase said by Matt in this advertisement has an interesting origin. In A.D. 79, Pliny the Elder, a Roman author and military commander, saw the eruption of Vesuvius from nearby. He staged a rescue mission by sailing several ships towards the Mount. His nephew later wrote:

This is surely a brave action, but the fortune didn’t favor Pliny — he died from asphyxia right after he reached Vesuvius. So it’s not 100% clear if the quote was good enough to use in the Crypto.com ad.

The video was undoubtedly made in good quality, and the Crypto.com team has paid a lot of money for it, inviting a Hollywood star to cooperate. However, we can see that the results were unexpectedly bad — both for Damon's reputation and people who followed the hype and bought BTC at its high just to be “brave”, as the actor said. Nobody wants to be a quitter, right? 

We can consider this “Fortune favors the brave” story as a great example of how money as a general concept hypnotizes people and bothers people from thinking rationally about the possible consequences. This illusion has even got Matt, who is known as a smart man with good intentions. And he has become a guiding star showing the wrong way to those who followed him. 

However, we can still draw a useful conclusion from this situation. Don’t chase the hype, even if it chases you. Make your own careful research about every crypto you are willing to invest in. Remember, that crypto is not an easy way to get profit, it’s a deal with its own potentials and risks. To get a crypto portfolio, first get acquainted with the basic rules; to purchase an asset — find all the information, reviews, price predictions and official company’s docs to make sure it’s worth your time. Stay safe!  

SimpleSwap reminds you that this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not provide investment advice. All purchases and cryptocurrency investments are your own responsibility.