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Ellen DeGeneres has presented a ‘hilarious’ send-up of it on her highly popular talk show, taking bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to a different level of mainstream exposure.
The fact that Ellen stood in front of her audience and did a partial breakdown on how cryptocurrency works using the image of an adorable baby goat shows how far out of the shadows bitcoin has come.
Bitcoin has Moved into Mainstream Media
Not long ago Bitcoin was talked about in the same hushed tones as the dark web and was only mentioned in the media as the currency of cybercriminals. It was how international drug dealers and human traffickers funded their criminal empires.
Today though references to Bitcoin have become commonplace in the news cycle and as fodder for comedy shows.
The general premise of which is that cryptocurrency is a little-understood, nerd based system of trading pseudo-money. Good for a laugh but in the end just another fad that will surely pass along like Zumba or the pet rock.
Though most of the send-ups of Bitcoin are about as tin can as the Ellen breakdown where she simply glosses over the system with a shoulder shrug and an eye roll to elicit laughs there have been some genuinely hilarious skits that deal with the complexity of Blockchain technology.
Still a Laughing Matter
A fake commercial for Bitcoin that aired on the Seth Meyer show presented three women having coffee and playing cards when one goes into the most abstract breakdown of digital currency, Blockchain and the crypto market your likely to hear outside of a Reddit thread while one friend pretends to understand every nuance and the other becomes incredulous about the jibberish.
Likewise the often subversive and consistently off-kilter Conan O’Brien aired a breakdown of Bitcoin by its founder ‘Marcus Ortman’ who rambles away using half technical, half new age lingo, even at one point parsing the famous flat circle speech from True Detective. Finally, Conan tries to corner him on giving a straight answer. At which point Ortman throws a smoke bomb and tries to disappear but can’t even get that right.
Bitcoin has moved out the murky depths of the dark web to the spotlight of mainstream media even if it’s only to be either derided or laughed at. Whether it be grumpy old billionaires calling it “Poisonous” and “asinine” or comedians poking fun at the complex technology the message is clear. Bitcoin is a thing for tech weirdos, like dungeons and dragons.
That is until the next phase. I imagine the first blockbuster movie starring the muscle guy (I’m talking to you Dwayne Johnson) and his sexy female sidekick tracking down the evil cyber criminal who made off with the all the cryptocurrency raised to help the orphans isn’t to far off.
