Text from article (edited for length): In the crypto world, a “rug pull” is a scam in which crooks push a fake crypto “coin,” promising easy and tremendous profits. Then, the scammers “pull the rug out” from unsuspecting buyers, taking their money. The Coinbase ad functioned as a rug pull singalong. (At least no one lost their life savings this time.) And Coinbase is bragging about it. The company is proudly declaring that they got people to sing along—celebrating that they deceived viewers into participating in something they wouldn't have chosen knowingly. But nobody appreciates being tricked. When your brand inspires a spontaneous outbreak of boos and groans at Super Bowl parties across the nation, you have serious problems. Ads are generally designed to make people smile, cheer, or develop positive feelings. Coinbase’s karaoke ad did the opposite. The ad came at a moment when the price of Bitcoin has crashed—yet again—evaporating billions of dollars in customer money..... Clearly, no one at Coinbase thought too deeply about the symbolic meanings of the ad (or the low credibility of its own brand). The framing foul: When your ad is rooted in emotional fraud, you’ve accidentally told the truth about your industry’s business model. No one at Coinbase was cognitively aware enough to see they’d structured their big brand moment around the very critique that dogs the entire industry. Coinbase framed crypto as deception.