Khaby Lame is literally on top of the world (if TikTok followers are the world). After attending his first VidCon and surpassing Charli D’Amelio as the most followed TikToker, the Italian-Senegalese comedian signed up as an ambassador for Binance, the world’s largest platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. Just last week, Binance entered into a partnership with soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who wants to “change the NFT game†
These high-profile partnerships come at a disturbing time for crypto. In May, the popular cryptocurrency TerraUSD collapsed, meaning everyone who invested in the coin lost all the money they put in† Then, in the face of a macroeconomic downturn, crypto firms such as Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlockFi, and Gemini took layoffs and the prices of top cryptocurrencies fell by as much as 35% week after week. In short, anyone who has invested in cryptocurrency is feeling a little nervous right now, unless they are so optimistic that they are unimpressed by the fact that Bitcoin hit a price of over $60,000 in November and is dropping to today. about $20,000. So it can be a bad look for creators to turn around and encourage their followers to check out Binance.
That hasn’t stopped Khaby Lame, though. Today he posted a video to his followers — 145 million on TikTok and 78 million further Instagram – in which he appears as a Binance-branded superhero and saves the day while a friend says “WTF is web3???” types. on ‘Boogle’.
Lame gained internet stars for his videos where he fakes and makes overly complicated life hacks simple. Without saying a word, he opens his hands as if to say, “Look, I’ve fixed it.” Binance said in a press release that Lame will be applying this TikTok format to videos across web3, in an effort to simplify complex concepts for his followers. That might be hard for him to achieve in his videos because he rarely speaks.
In a statement, Lame said: “I consider my followers my family and I am always looking for new challenges and interesting content to share with them. I had been curious about web3 for a while and seized the opportunity to collaborate with a leader like Binance, because it fits perfectly with what I usually do: making complex things easy and fun for everyone!”
Lame has also weighed in on emerging (and potentially volatile) technology by partnering with Meta to promote the metaverse — appearing in a video on the company accounts of the tech giant alongside Mark Zuckerberg.
As brand ambassadors, both Khaby Lame and Cristiano Ronaldo will create NFTs for their fans to buy and trade.
Some companies like Pearpop — backed by The Chainsmokers, Alexis Ohanian, Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg — think that web3 could power the future of the creative economy. But some industry veterans think space is too volatile to trust right now.
“I’m personally very bearish about NFTs,” said longtime YouTuber Hank Green on the stage at VidCon last week – but he joked he could be wrong, thinking YouTube would never support HD video. He later added, “I don’t want to sell anyone something that may not be valuable.”
Fan trust in a creator can change drastically depending on the reputation of the brands they promote, but brand deals are almost inevitable for a creator looking to earn a reliable income. Especially on TikTok, where creator fund payouts are dwindling, creators aren’t being paid enough through the platform alone. With ambassadors like Lame and Ronaldo, Binance has to spend some serious money, but for these stars, that payment comes at the cost of potential pushback and outrage down the road.