Coinbase’s UK musical ad hits a nerve — sparking debate from crypto fans to founders

Coinbase set the business community alight after the American crypto firm dropped a musical advert which lambasted the U.K. as besieged by economic problems and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

Online communities from LinkedIn to Reddit are buzzing over the two-minute mini musical ad titled “Everything is Fine,” which satirized the U.K. as a country riven with strikes, job losses and rocketing prices. Two people featured in the ad say they’re “jumping ship” and leaving for sunnier climes in Dubai.

Fintech, crypto and venture capitalists — frequent investors in the crypto world — praised the video and agreed with its underlying premise, but the ad has also divided opinion among Brits outside of the industry.

“An absolute banger from Coinbase,” venture capitalist Michael Jackson commented on LinkedIn, adding that “it’s been sad to see the UK’s — particularly London’s — decline in recent decades.”

“The country’s bureaucracy is overbearing and stifling, and it continues to walk back on personal freedoms. Policies are ill conceived. Politicians are incompetent. There’s been a discernible decline in quality of life there,” he noted.

Helen Yu, the founder and CEO of Tigon Advisory Corp and named as one of the top 50 Women in Tech, commented on LinkedIn that the ad reminded her of “when regulatory hurdles shaped how we approached messaging in emerging tech. Sometimes the most creative ideas find their home where the rules aren’t as strict.”

Other reactions were more cynical, saying the ad was purely self-promotional and painted a misleading picture of the U.K.

The opening shot shows water leaking through a ceiling before a man cheerfully launches into the lyrics, “We ain’t got no troubles, no reason to complain because here in Great old Britain, we just love it when it rains” before segueing into a musical montage of rat and trash-strewn streets, chaotic roadworks and exorbitant prices at the supermarket.

One shot shows a shopper buying fish fingers priced at £100 ($132). Nota bene, a typical pack of six frozen fish fingers costs nearer to £3 from national supermarket Tesco.

Coinbase said of the ad, “if everything is fine, then don’t change anything at all. But when the financial system isn’t working for so many people in the U.K., it needs to be updated,” adding that firm’s mission was to “create an open financial system for the world.”

Lucy Gazmararian, founder and managing partner at Token Bay Capital, told CNBC on Monday that the debate provoked by the ad showed that “crypto’s really having its moment.”

“Everybody is playing catch-up and now it’s ok to come out and support crypto and take a critical look at existing financial infrastructure and to say, ‘where can we make the changes, what are we not seeing?’ So this is a very welcome debate that, arguably, should have happened a few years ago,” she said during an interview on “Squawk Box Europe.”

She said the U.K. was behind many other countries trying to understand how to incorporate cryptocurrencies and related infrastructure, such as blockchain technology, fit into domestic financial systems.

“Every single jurisdiction needs to take a really good look at this … they need to make changes now if they’re not going to be left behind. The entire global financial system is about to be rewired,” she said.

The ad has nevertheless drawn its own share of critics.

“Ah yes. The solution to inflation, stagnating wages, crumbling infrastructure and withering welfare system… cryptocurrency,” one user wrote on Reddit’s “AskBrits” thread, while others described the ad as “infantile” and “arrogant.”

Many questioned how the ad showed consumers what Coinbase, a crypto investment platform, actually does.

The satirical ad has been widely seen as a strident critique of the U.K. government. Critics of the Labour-led administration have previously accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of not doing enough to fix problems such as lackluster growth, rising debt and shaky business investment.

Crypto firms like Coinbase have historically had an axe to grind with various Western governments, which they’ve accused of being slow to embrace cryptocurrencies and to modernize policies and regulation.

CNBC has contacted the U.K. government and Coinbase for further comment.

The government’s critics were quick to jump on the ad over the weekend, with Nigel Farage, head of the Reform UK party, commenting on X that “Even Coinbase says Britain is broken.”

Conservative and former U.K. Chancellor George Osborne, who’s on the advisory council of Coinbase, warned in an opinion piece in the Financial Times on Monday that “Britain missed the first crypto wave. We can’t miss the second.”

There are conflicting opinions over the wider economic outlook for the U.K. — the annual rate of domestic inflation rose to 3.6% in June, but is expected to moderate over the course of the year, according to the Bank of England, which is seen cutting interest rates from 4.25% to 4% at its next meeting in August.

The U.K. is expected to grow 1.3% in 2025 before slowing to 1% in 2026, according to the OECD, although a trade deal and a baseline 10% export tariff with the U.S. has soothed fears over a further hit to the economy.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted on X on Monday that the company’s ad had “sparked quite a reaction” but claimed that the video was not targeting the Labour-led government, specifically.

“Needing to update the system and improve society is not a political statement on either party in the UK (some have tried to turn it into this). And it’s not specific to the U.K. (we ran ads with similar themes in the U.S.),” he said, adding that it was “a statement about how the traditional financial system is not working for many people and how crypto represents a way to improve that.”

He also claimed that the firm’s previous ad, posted on YouTube last Thursday, had “got banned in the UK by the TV networks.” CNBC was unable to verify this.

Coinbase has had a previous run-in with the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Agency, however, with a 2021 ad deemed to be misleading for consumers and for failing to adequately highlight the risks associated with such investments. 

Armstrong on Monday said that the company welcomed “the attacks and any other attempts to censor this message, as it just helps it spread.”

Back in April, Coinbase’s U.K. boss Keith Grose told CNBC that Britain needed “smart” regulation or risked losing ground to rival fintech and crypto hubs in the U.S. and Asia.

He and other crypto heads have argued that the national regulator takes too strict of an approach to registering new firms, and that pension funds managing trillions of pounds are too risk-averse, despite Britain previously promising to be a bastion of innovation in the industry.

Coinbase shares fell last Thursday after the company’s second-quarter revenue came in shy of analysts’ estimates. Gains in the cryptocurrency exchange’s subscription revenue failed to offset weaker trading volumes during the quarter, the earnings showed.

In the quarter ended June 30, Coinbase’s net income rose to $1.43 billion, or $5.14 per share, from $36.13 million, or 14 cents per share, a year ago.

— CNBC’s Tanaya Macheel and Ryan Browne contributed reporting to this story.