Coinbase’s QR Code Super Bowl Commercial Seems To Have Succeeded Mainly At Pissing People Off And Crashing Their Website

In what’s sure to be the most talked-about commercial of the Super Bowl (and not only because many ads were released in the days before the game), a floating QR code appeared on the screen near the end of the first quarter. Curiosity got the best of me and I, like thousands (millions) of others, took out my phone to see what it was for. I should have known better: the QR code led to a website for Coinbase, which offered “$15 in free Bitcoin for signing up.” I don’t know what Coinbase, and honestly, I don’t care. But I do care that the ad pissed a lot of people when they realized what it was for.

— jordan (@JordanUhl) February 14, 2022

“I scanned that QR code and lost $4.5 billion,” Parks and Recreation and The Good Place creator Michael Schur tweeted. “That QR code commercial just sent me into a reactionary tailspin,” sports personality Katie Nolan joked, while investor Joe Pompliano added, “Coinbase just spent $14 million for a color-changing QR code to bounce around on the screen for 30-seconds during the Super Bowl…”

That wasn’t a joke: the website did crash from the influx of traffic. Oops.