Coinbase Super Bowl Ad Results in Outage, Shares Slip 5%

Coinbase spent as much as $14 million in its 30 second Super Bowl ad on Sunday only to see a temporary outage of its platform due to unprecedented heavy traffic of users.

Coinbase’s Chief Product Officer, Surojit Chatterjee revealed that the crypto exchange saw record traffic in its operational history. That caused a brief outage of the platform, but the team was quick enough to adapt the infrastructure and make it ready to handle such a surprising load.

@coinbase just saw more traffic than we've ever encountered, but our teams pulled together and only had to throttle traffic for a few minutes. We are now back and ready for you at https://t.co/ZUJqRlnZPH. Humbled to have been witness to this. #WAGMI

— Surojit (@surojit) February 14, 2022

Coinbase was one of the many crypto exchanges that featured ads during the Super Bowl LVI between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals. Coinbase’s ad stood out as the exchange had a bold approach of showcasing a letter ‘C’ and then a QR code bouncing into the screen in a retro DVD logo style for a minute.

Being scanned, the QR code took potential clients to a landing page with information of the giveaway: the crypto exchange is handing out $15 worth of Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term to new users and $1 million each to three existing users.

ICYMI 👀

Now that we have your attention we'd like to announce that we're giving away $15 in BTC to anyone who joins Coinbase by 2/15.

Click below for more info and RT to tell your friends!

Sign up and see terms here → https://t.co/fKHisXZJJc pic.twitter.com/SDWUup2Ql5

— Coinbase (@coinbase) February 14, 2022

The massive ad campaign was maligned by the consecutive outage of the platform. It resulted in a flood of negative reactions and memes on social media and even received the reaction of former NSA analyst and whistleblower Whistleblower A whistleblower is an individual who manages to provide information or activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct. In many countries, including the United States, whistleblowers are protected by law and in some cases can even recoup rewards if their information leads to successful prosecution.In the context of the financial services industry, whistleblowers play a large role in oversight, helping unmask several episodes of illicit behavior A whistleblower is an individual who manages to provide information or activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct. In many countries, including the United States, whistleblowers are protected by law and in some cases can even recoup rewards if their information leads to successful prosecution.In the context of the financial services industry, whistleblowers play a large role in oversight, helping unmask several episodes of illicit behavior Read this Term, Edward Snowden.

“Coinbase spending $16,000,000 on a Superbowl ad to direct people to their website and $0 to make sure that website doesn't crash 10 seconds after the ad starts is so very internet,” Snowden wrote on Twitter.

Bloody Wall Street

Further, the investors of the publicly-listed exchange did not take the ad campaign the right way. Coinbase’s share price dropped by 5 percent in the after-hours trading before the US stock markets open on Monday. The crypto exchange stock is trading around $195 apiece, as of press time.

Meanwhile, other top crypto exchanges like FTX, Crypto.com and eToro bought Super Bowl ad space to feature their ads.