Athletes who promoted cryptocurrency to African/Black community getting karma?

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(ThyBlackMan.com) LeBron James is making another deep run in the NBA playoffs. The Los Angeles Lakers are surprisingly in the Western Conference Finals this season after their very bumpy regular season filled with injuries and personnel changes including trading future Hall of Famer Russell Westbrook to shake up the team’s on-court chemistry. The Lakers host their home games during the Western Conference Finals in the Crypto.com Arena, which still sounds unusual for the building formerly known as the Staples Center. The Staples Center was the home of the Lakers and Clippers from 1999-2021, during the championship days of NBA legendary duo Shaq and Kobe along with the Kobe-led NBA Finals Lakers teams after that. Regardless of the nostalgia of the former name, which was also based on a corporate brand as well, the Crypto.com Arena even has a link to the most famous current Laker, LeBron James.

Lebron James Crypto

During the 2022 Super Bowl, a Crypto.com ad featuring LeBron James and “teenage” LeBron James was one of the more interesting and unique ads during that year’s Super Bowl. In the ad, the adult LeBron James talks to his 17-year-old self about the future and taking chances. The teenage LeBron is done visually with the help of CGI and the older LeBron, played by himself, says the line, “If you want to make history, you gotta call your own shots,”. The line can be viewed as both a nod to James’s own decision back in 2003 to enter the NBA out of high school as well as imploring viewers to get involved in cryptocurrency through Crypto.com.

LeBron James isn’t the only major athlete to promote cryptocurrency in recent years. One of the biggest financial stories of 2022 was the collapse of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency platform, FTX. Former FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is about to go on trial for several charges including how the FTX crypto platform handled its customers’ funds and other funds. NBA All-Star Stephen Curry is also a defendant in a class-action lawsuit against FTX. The defendants in that lawsuit also include former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal and Major League Baseball All-Star Shohei Ohtani, among other high-profile figures.

In particular, Stephen Curry had an FTX commercial that used to run on television that played on Curry’s “lack of knowledge about crypto” with Shaquille O’Neal, who never appears in the commercial, providing voiceover questions about cryptocurrency as an option for people. While the Stephen Curry and LeBron James ads about cryptocurrency companies do not explicitly imply they are attempting to reach African/Black people exclusively, those two professional athletes have “credibility” for millions of African/Black people in the U.S. and globally for even reasons beyond their stellar athletic careers.

The promotion of African/Black athletes promoting cryptocurrency to the African/Black community can be viewed as “cryptoganda” as coined by Dr. Jared Ball. Ball, a Professor of Communication and Africana Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. and author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power, defines “cryptoganda” as “the application of existing models of propaganda to the crypto world, updates mechanisms meant to maintain the effective programs of obscuring deep and meaningful conversation about the economy.”

Those aforementioned crypto ads used prominent African/Black athletes in ads to show the African/Black masses another way for “financial freedom”. However, as Dr. Ball notes, it is a rebrand of “Black capitalism and is meant to negate attempts by Black people to achieve genuine political power.” Now some of those athletes are facing legal troubles for their involvement in pushing cryptocurrency and while none of them will face the threat of poverty for doing so, the recent legal issues they are facing could be viewed as karmic.

Staff Writer; Mark Hines

Eugenio says:

May 21, 2023 at 12:13 am

Another dirty tactic to deceive and deterred black people from investing in the things that other races are investing and doing very well.

Indeed, Not all crypto currency investment opportunities are legit but there are quite a few just like commodities, options, stock market etc.. that are very good places to invest your hard earn money and get a good return that could and will create generational wealth for your family; more so, for your offspring or children of your children. Yes, I encourage all my fellow African Americans to invest in something that is legit, law abiding and offer a good return for your money with guarantees that will not affect you financial stability.

Every African men, women or LGBT should have a black financial advisor, black tax preparer, black consultant, a black lawyer, a black real state agent, a black manager and a black person at your side as your counselor, advisor and friend that is honest, loyal, faithful with integrity and support for the black movement of empowering our community into becoming self sufficient and self worth in order to create a black power economic center similar to what we had back in the 1900″s known as Black Wall Street before the crazy, insecure, racist white people with small private parts came and destroyed everything our forefathers had build for us.

if other races are investing in crypto and other markets values and doing very good then we should do the same and follow their steps with the only difference that we will do for us and only us in the same way that they do for themselves and their own people. Yes, Asian, Hispanics and Middle eastern use and trust people who look like them to conduct their financial investments and portfolio; therefore, we as proud black people should do the same and stick with our own kind because anytime a black person attempts to kumbaya with another race for success and investments, that other race takes advantage and take your winnings and give you only your losses.

All African American should put their hard earned money in black owned banks such as OneUnited Bank and many other black banks located all around the United States of America. We should only have black tax preparers handle our taxes and important documents in the same way that the untouchable people in America only allow their untouchable counterparts to handle their financial investments and tax documents.

Black America do not let anyone stop you from becoming financial savvy and successful, always seek help from honest, reliable, hard working black men, black women or black LGBT that have the best interest of our black community. Just imagine if 47 million black people deposits $100 dollars each a month in a black owned bank every month for one year, that will give us over $4 billion dollars a month which will result in over $56 billion dollars a year. Yes, that is power and with that we can be our own country by ourselves and away from racist America.

- LJ says:
  
  May 27, 2023 at 10:14 pm
  
  Clearly, you haven’t read nor listened to Dr. Ball’s analysis. All the myths and propaganda you just stated has already been debated and debunked. Capitalism doesn’t work, even if it is black.
  
ZaSu Pitts says:

May 20, 2023 at 5:29 pm

Tulip bulbs always come to mind when I hear about cyrpto grifts.
Unfortunately you can’t eat crypto when the value collapses like they did when the tulip bulb value run up collapsed back when Joe Biden was just a teenager (maybe it was a few years before that, but not by much;-)