Where Have All the Crypto-Shilling Celebs Gone?

“Crypto is here to stay.”

That’s what Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon boldly stated back in December. The statement was part of a string of weird crypto tweets the actress posted on Twitter. “In the (near) future, every person will have a parallel digital identity,” Witherspoon added. “Avatars, crypto wallets, digital goods will be the norm. Are you planning for this?”

Much to Reese’s probable dismay, I was not planning for the crypto revolution because cryptocurrency and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are dumb and wreaking havoc on the environment. Turns out my lack of planning had no dire consequences because the crypto market is currently collapsing. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has dropped to its lowest point since 2020, while sales of NFTs fell 92% at the beginning of this month. The crypto trading platform Coinbase is also facing a steep downturn in the market.

Over the past year, and before the current crash, people online were really gung-ho about cryptocurrencies and digital collectibles, especially Hollywood celebrities. Beyond Witherspoon, actors, musicians and top athletes like Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Justin Bieber, Larry David, Mila Kunis, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Kim Kardashian and LeBron James were all relentlessly persuading us through Super Bowl commercials, music videos, Instagram posts and interviews to invest our real money we use to pay bills and buy groceries into unstable crypto investments.

These celebrities, who are getting paid millions to hawk crypto, have caught a lot of flack for peddling the digital currency and collectibles to their fans — encouraging them to invest in the highly speculative, volatile market while they themselves will face no severe financial loss when shit inevitably hits the fan.

Well, the shit has finally hit, and the celebs who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about their pricey cartoon apes three weeks ago have now gone unusually quiet. The New York Times reached out to many of these crypto-shilling celebrities and hilariously, not one responded to a request for comment. No one, that is, besides Jeff Schaffer, who directed FTX’s Super Bowl commercial that featured Larry David promoting the crypto exchange site and inadvertently summed up the relationship between celebrities and crypto to the Times perfectly:

“Unfortunately I don’t think we’d have anything to add as we have no idea how cryptocurrency works (even after having it explained to us repeatedly), don’t own it, and don’t follow its market,” he said. “We just set out to make a funny commercial!”