Khaby Lame is literally on top of the world (if TikTok followers matter, that’s the world). After attending his first VidCon and overtaking Charli D’Amelio as the most followed TikToker, the Italian-Senegalese comedian has signed on as an ambassador for Binance, the world’s largest platform for buying and selling TikToker. cryptocurrencies. Just last week, Binance entered into a partnership with soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who wants “change NFT game.”
These high profile partnerships come at a troubling time for crypto. In May, popular cryptocurrency TerraUSD crashed, meaning anyone who invested in the coin lost all the money they invested. Then, in the face of a macroeconomic downturn, crypto companies like Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlockFi, and Gemini made layoffs, and prices for major cryptocurrencies fell 35% week over week. Basically, anyone who has invested in cryptocurrency is feeling a little nervous right now, unless they are so optimistic that they are unimpressed with Bitcoin reaching a price of over $60,000 in November, then drops to around $20,000 today. So it might be a bad idea for creators to turn around and encourage their followers to check out Binance.
That didn’t stop Khaby Lame, however. Today he posted a video to his followers – 145 million on TikTok and 78 million on Instagram – in which he appears as a Binance-branded superhero, saving the day as a friend types “WTF is web3? ??” on Boogle.
Lame has become famous on the internet for his videos where he parodies overly complicated life hacks and makes them simple. Without speaking, he opens his hands as if to say, “Listen, I fixed it. Binance said in a press release that Lame will apply this TikTok format to videos on the web3, trying to simplify complex concepts for its followers. This can be difficult for him to accomplish in his videos, as he rarely speaks.
In a statement, Lame said, “I consider my subscribers to be my family and I am always on the lookout for new challenges and interesting content to share with them. I’ve been curious about Web3 for a while and jumped at the chance to partner with a leader like Binance because it fits perfectly with what I usually do: making complex things easy and fun for everyone. world !”
Lame also weighed in on emerging (and potentially short-lived) technology by teaming up with Meta to announce the Metaverse – he appeared in a video on the tech giant’s corporate accounts alongside Mark Zuckerberg.
As brand ambassadors, Khaby Lame and Cristiano Ronaldo will craft NFTs, which their fans can buy and trade.
Some companies like Pearpop – backed by The Chainsmokers, Alexis Ohanian, Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg – believe web3 can power the future of the creator economy. But some industry veterans think the space is too volatile to trust right now.
“I’m personally very bearish on NFTs,” longtime YouTuber Hank Green said on stage at VidCon last week – but he joked he could be wrong because he thought YouTube would never take notice. supports HD video. He later added, “I don’t want to sell someone something that might not have value.”
Fan trust in a creator can change drastically depending on the reputation of the brands they promote, but brand deals are pretty much inevitable for a creator looking to generate reliable revenue. Especially on TikTok, where payouts of creator funds are decreasing, creators are not being paid enough by the platform alone. With ambassadors like Lame and Ronaldo, Binance has to shell out the money, but for these stars, that payment comes at the cost of potential pushback and outrage down the road.
techcrunch Gt