What’s next for crypto at Eurovision this year?
There are many people in the UK who are feverishly excited about the coronation of King Charles III this weekend. There are many other people in Europe who are equally hysterical about the Eurovision Song Contest next weekend.
I am not one of those people. And I hope I never, ever, am one of those people. I would rather set fire to my home and all the books and art therein.
I appreciate that people do love these two events and if it makes them happy, then so be it. However, what does interest me with these two ‘spectacular’ events is how they interact with the future while trading on their past. And crypto especially, being that it is the future.
I did think about searching for ‘Coronation crypto’ or ‘Coronation NFT’ but I know all those roads would have led me to a Mancunian street where crypto has no name, so I didn’t.
Then I thought I’d try an AI-generated platform such as ChapGPT but I didn’t think I would get out alive, so I didn’t.
So I gave up the Coronation thing altogether and focused on Eurovision, as much as the Coronation organisers previously gave up on May 13 for its event, knowing that Eurovision would be more popular.
Like moving a Spurs football match to allow a bigger game at Brentford to be televised, the Coronation had to do the same.
So, focusing on Eurovision I eschewed technology and used my human memory, remembering that last year’s Eurovision had indeed interacted with crypto and a fine thing it was too.
For those who may have missed it, last winner’s were an odd Ukrainian band called the Kalush Orchestra who had a singer with a silly bucket hat. Very Eurovision, dahlings.
However, after that the cliches stopped. The band had more vision than Eurovision and went into cryptovision by holding an auction and selling off an NFT of the ‘iconic crystal microphone trophy’ for $900,000… and for the war effort in Ukraine.
The buyer was the Ukrainian crypto exchange WhiteBIT and the money raised was used to buy three drones to help in the war effort. Any suggestion that they were used to bomb the Kremlin this week are fanciful, but who knows in 2023?
We used to exchange ploughshares for guns, now we’re swapping a competition trophy for an assassination weapon and it doesn’t even seem ridiculous.
The $900k raise also proves, contrarily, that crypto exchanges are, in fact, places for arms dealers, thus obviating all the anti-crypto ‘arm dealer’ tropes many of us have tried to ridicule. And so it goes.
Eurovision showed itself to be up with the times. So what do they have up their sequined sleeves this year? Surely there must be some NFT activity that a marketer could come up with and get the huge publicity that WhiteBIT received last year?
Or maybe, it will be even more weird. Russia, apparently, is trying to disrupt the filming of Eurovision next weekend, perhaps they’ll go further and send drones over Liverpool to drop copies of the ‘iconic crystal microphone trophy’ on the heads of the performers and audience to literally put one over on Ukraine for last year’s effrontery.
The front line in wars used to be trenches, now it appears to be a music competition; I think I’m going mad. Like many people nowadays, I have absolutely no idea of what’s going to happen next be that Liverpool or The Mall, maybe the Coronation will be a glorious event that makes everybody happy and I’ll love the winning Eurovision song.
But probably not. More interested in a NFT auction somewhere. Might buy an attack drone. Might buy some marimbas. Might give Meghan a call. God save the King. Right.
MM