🏈 ¿Super Bowl or Crypto Bowl?

5 min readFeb 15, 2022

Super Bowl is a few days away and Los Angeles, CA is up for a big party. This years game will be played between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. Outside of sports, the Super Bowl is one of the most watched television broadcasts in the United States each year (≈ $120 million viewers). Many musicians have performed during pregame and halftime ceremonies making it the most attractive show of the year.

The advertising strip is the most expensive of the whole year, and the day of the match (known as “Super Sunday” — Super Sunday — ) is considered a national holiday. This year the 30-second commercials during the game cost about $7 million each.

Unlike past years, 2022 will witness a version full of crypto platform commercials and NFT announcements. For this reason, The Wall Street Journal has dubbed it the “Crypto Bowl”. This industry has been advancing by leaps and bounds and an example of this is that until last year there was no crypto ads in the Super Bowl and the majority of the population had no idea what an NFT was a year ago.

In this Super Bowl we will see commercials from the FTX exchange platform, presented by actor Matt Damon, as well as advertisements from Coinbase and Crypto.com which will air starring Tom Brady, ex-player and crypto investor .com and autograph.io

We also expect to see other companies like Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, and Proctor & Gamble announce their NFT projects to more than 120 million viewers.

Paradox of the Week…

All this commotion has been contrasted with the news of the couple who has been arrested in Manhattan for the theft suffered by the Bitfinex platform in 2016, which was initially 58 million but increased in size due to the revaluation of the cryptocurrency. Today, the recovery of these Bitcoins by the United States government is valued at more than $3.6 billion, which to date is the largest crypto seizure of all time.

This news has left much to be desired and has tarnished the image of cryptocurrencies a bit, but with the amount of positive messages that we will see this Sunday, Is it possible that the stain could be erased? We shall see…

🎙️ Stings$ vs DeFi$ (An industry comparison)

On the other hand, in the music world we learned that Sting, one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time, has sold his entire musical catalog to “Universal Music” for just under $300 million dollars. A somewhat small amount for an artist with more than 50 years producing and who has sold more than one hundred million records, received sixteen Grammy Awards for his work, and earned an Oscar nomination for best song.

We say that the amount of “$300 million” that Sting has received is small when compared to the $600 million wealth that Olaf Carlson-Wee (33 years old), known as ‘“Crypto’s Original bubble boy”, has earned during the last years 6 years.

Olaf founded the company “Polychain Capital” in 2016 by investing all of his capital in Ethereum when Ether was only $10. For the last couple of years, Polychain has been investing mainly in DeFi protocols, a strategy that has given them more than 125,000% profit on their assets. This success has drawn the attention of financial groups such as “Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital” who have become investors in Polychain. An extraordinary achievement for a young man who is only 33 years old, fewer than Sting’s entire career.

The comparisons could go on, but it goes without saying that we are witnessing an imminent “changing of the guard.” The super bowl and the global sports industry will soon be hosted by companies with roots in Blockchain. The monetary amounts, which in the past seemed stratospheric to us, will now look tiny compared to those of Decentralized Finance.

Another example of the abrupt change we are experiencing is that the number of digital wallet users has surpassed the number of savings accounts in the US. According to publicly available data, Square’s Cash app and PayPal’s Venmo have amassed 74 million and 82 million annual active users in the last 8 and 11 years, respectively. (figures do not include crypto wallets) J.P. Morgan reached 60 million deposit account holders after five acquisitions in more than 30 years.

If in one year (2021) the Crypto industry grew by 187.5%, NFT transactions were $25 billion and the Metaverse market is worth $21.91 billion, where will we be in the next Super Bowl? Well, we shall see…

👀 Under the Radar

THORchain (RUNE) — Decentralized liquidity protocol that allows users to easily trade crypto assets without losing custody of their assets. Market prices are maintained through the proportion of assets in a pool.
Convex Finance (CVX) — It is the version of Curve, but on steroids. You can deposit Curve LP tokens to earn Curve trading fees, boosted CRV and CVX tokens. When staking cvxCRV, you get the usual veCRV rewards (Curve 3crv governance fee distribution + any airdrops), plus a 10% share of CRV earnings boosted from Convex LP and CVX tokens.
Secret (SCRT) — Secret is the native currency of the “Secret” network, a blockchain with data privacy for smart contracts by default, it allows you to create and use applications without permission (permissionless), preserving your privacy. This functionality protects users, applications, and opens up thousands of uses for Web3.
Bancor (BMT) — It was the first DeFi protocol. Unique decentralized staking protocol that allows you to earn money with single token exposure and full protection against impermanent loss. Today, it generates millions in fees per month for depositors, offering up to 60% APR on tokens like ETH, WBTC, LINK, MATIC, AAVE, and more. Bancor is owned by its community through Bancor DAO.
Synthetix (SNX) — Ethereum (ETH)-based DeFi protocol that provides on-chain exposure to a wide variety of crypto and non-crypto assets. It offers users access to highly liquid synthetic assets (synths). Synthesizers track and provide returns on the underlying asset without the need for one to directly hold the asset. It aims to expand the crypto space by introducing non-blockchain assets, giving it access to a stronger financial market.

🏈 ¿Super Bowl or Crypto Bowl?

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