When you’re famous and you post about crypto
Wrestler John Cena Posts about Bitcoin on Instagram to 7 Million Followers
John Cena isn’t just one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling, he’s also just become bitcoin’s latest unofficial celebrity endorser. Yesterday the 16-time champion posted a stock image of bitcoins on his Instagram, which has 7.4 million followers. For better or for worse, this small gesture amounts to a huge branding boost to a mainstream audience for the father/mother of all cryptocurrencies.
Cena didn’t add any caption to explain what’s on his mind, but his Insta bio speaks for itself: “Welcome to my Instagram. These images will be posted without explanation, for your interpretation. Enjoy.”
And interpret they did. The professional wrestler posted the picture at 8 a.m. EST and just two hours after Cena’s post, bitcoin’s price immediately rose and hit an all-time high.
“When a public figure take notice of bitcoin you know what it means?” noted one commentor. “Small bubble, then a loss buckle your seat belts boy and buy the dip in 7 days.”
As we saw in this case, it’s a fact that when an uber famous public figure associates with cryptocurrencies at all, but especially netrually (like Cena) or positively, then the reactions of their massive audiences can have real effects on the market, at least temporarily. We’ve already come across the same effect when famous people promoted various cryptocurrencies and ICO tokens. For instance when boxing champion Floyd Mayweather promoted various ICOs on his personal Instagram or when Mark Cuban invested in a cryptocurrency fund. Other celebrities who’ve spoken positively about cryptocurrencies are Mike Tyson, Brock Pierce, and 50 Cent, who even sold his album in bitcoins. Mostly these are organic endorsements/associations, but in the case of Mayweather at least one post was evidently a paid ad.
Of course short term these kinds of random bubbles caused by celebrity endorsement serve to destabilize the market overall. But looking more long term, the role of celebrity influencer marketing clearly has huge (and thus far, fairly untapped) potential to increase mainstream awareness and eventual adoption of crypto and other blockchain-related technology.
