“Look away now if you dislike your world view being challenged”

Think back to February and the weekend of the Super Bowl. I didn’t watch it as I have better things to do in the early hours of the morning, such as playing Cyberpunk 2077 because I can’t sleep. Also, I prefer proper rugby without crash helmets and 1980s shoulder pads. I didn’t escape the fallout of the thing, though, and I’m not talking about Eminem taking the knee: I’m talking about the adverts.

Don’t worry, this isn’t another of my regular rants about trackers, cookie options or advert delivery and blocking options. It’s about a certain level of cybersecurity-related hysteria. That hysteria, spread by way of tweets, blogs and emails, concerned Coinbase. Not for the usual “crypto is all an illusion” reasons, either, but rather down to a 60-second advert featuring a QR code bouncing around the telly box, or more likely your computer screen, by way of a half-time advertising slot that is reported to have cost around $13 million.

Coinbase no doubt considers that money well spent; it reckons some 20 million hits on the landing page from scanning that QR code were seen during the single minute