Just What The Payments Industry Needs: The Mike Tyson Digital Wallet

When Bitcoin Direct on Monday (Jan. 4) unveiled the Mike Tyson Digital Wallet, it was asking for trouble. You know it’s a bad sign when your marketing move is so awful that Time Magazine can’t resist making fun of it.

The point of a celebrity endorsement is that the celebrity’s brand has some positive attributes—bravery, intelligence, beauty, talent—that a company wants attributed to its brand. What exactly was the positive association Bitcoin Direct had in mind? How would this make consumers more comfortable using Bitcoin? In the world of payments marketing, this is arguably the most “what were these people smoking?” move since Softcard—known then as ISIS (which itself was an interesting bit of name association)—hired a sleight-of-hand artist to demonstrate its mobile wallet at the South by Southwest conference in Austin back in 2012.

Read More