Ellen DeGeneres is the latest celebrity to weigh in on bitcoin BTCUSD, -6.35% mania, but it doesn’t look like she’ll be buying in anytime soon.
DeGeneres gamely took a stab at explaining bitcoin on a segment of her NBC CMCSA, -0.72% talk show, which aired Thursday afternoon.
“Everybody is talking about bitcoin; nobody understands it,” she said. “It’s like a plot twist in a confusing movie, when you’re watching a movie and your friends are acting like they know what’s going on, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I do too.’ ”
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In an attempt to help viewers understand cryptocurrency, the TV host used an unusual analogy: “Pretend like bitcoin is a goat. Now it’s adorable ... and you want to pick it up and you want to pet it. But you can’t because it’s not there. It doesn’t exist except for on that internet right there, just like bitcoin is digital currency.
“Say you own one bitcoin, and you bought it when it was worth $10,000 — and then for some reason bitcoin becomes worth $20,000 — you just doubled your money. Personally I’d rather own a baby goat.”
Watch the whole segment here:
If you want to know what bitcoin is, I learned about it. A bit. pic.twitter.com/txICiTXYgi
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) February 15, 2018
DeGeneres also delved into topics including decentralization and digital wallets.
“You’re probably thinking, ‘Ellen, if I can’t touch it, where do I keep my bitcoin? In a digital purse?’ It’s kind of true. You keep it in a digital wallet. ... A digital wallet holds all of your bitcoin, unlike a real wallet, which holds receipts and punch cards for things like a free Jamba Juice.”
On Reddit, one commenter had this to say about Ellen’s introduction of bitcoin to her 3 million viewers: “The bull cometh.”
Though the bitcoin fans on that forum had plenty to gripe over in DeGeneres’s segment, many echoed the sentiment that such widespread exposure for cryptocurrency could only be good for adoption rates.
“Even if it is regarded as a joke, it’s still fresh eyes seeing something, and there may be a ton of people that had no clue what it was and WILL look at it seriously ... [and] this will probably help get more fresh money into crypto has a whole,” wrote another commenter going by the name “solidad.”
Ellen may be no fan, but, for plenty of other celebs, dipping one’s toes into the cryptocurrency world has become de rigueur. Or in Katy Perry’s case — one’s fingernails.
Rapper 50 Cent supposedly is a bitcoin millionaire, after collecting a reported 700 bitcoins from sales of his album back in 2014. Dennis Rodman is touting a cryptocurrency called potcoin. Gwyneth Paltrow was added as an adviser to bitcoin startup Abra in August 2017. So many celebs are getting in on the game, in fact, that the SEC has warned consumers to exercise caution when making purchases based on endorsements from the rich and famous.
See: 50 Cent discovered he’s a bitcoin millionaire — these other celebrities could be too
Bitcoin was locked in a struggle to hold on to $10,000 late this week. Weakness crept in a day after bitcoin pushed back above the psychologically significant level of $10,000 for the first time since early February.