Rap legend Snoop Dogg performed live at the XRP Community Night last week as part of the activities marking the inaugural New York Blockchain Week. He was also intended to provide some hype for the cryptocurrency Ripple, but while Snoop was on stage for an hour, neither Ripple nor XRP was ever mentioned!
Snoop Dogg, one of the biggest names in hip-hop since the early 90s and also one of the most famous faces on the planet was scheduled to say some nice things about Ripple and their cryptocurrency coin XRP last week at the XRP Community Night during the inaugural New York Blockchain Week where he was booked to perform a live, one-hour set.
However, while similar events in the past have seen celebrities as diverse and wide ranging as boxing great Floyd Mayweather, NBA legend Dennis Rodman and hotel heiress Paris Hilton give well versed speeches promoting specific cryptocurrencies, last week’s big XRP shindig featured a (we assume) well paid superstar in Snoop Dogg doing what he does best in belting out hits like ”What’s My Name” and “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, but seeming to totally forget the real reason he was there and failing to say anything positive about Ripple or XRP. It’s not just that Snoop didn’t say anything positive about XRP; he didn’t say anything at all!
Needless to say, this left a lot of people in the packed, invitational-only crowd wondering if Snoop – who is legendary for his love of The Chronic (hashish) - had maybe had a little too much and completely forgotten the real reason he was doing a gig in front of several hundred white, Harvard educated NASDAQ/Silicon Valley types, which is certainly not his usual audience.
It’s not as if Snoop has an issue with cryptocurrency: Back in January of this year, Dogg was seen at a promotion for the digital currency trading app Robinhood. The 46-year-old spoke with enthusiasm about Robinhood, even quipping they were:
“Putting Tha Crip in Crypto!” (Little gang reference there from longtime “Rollin’ 20 Crip” Snoop.)
And yet when it came to eulogize a little about the world’s third biggest cryptocurrency in Ripple, and the one that will in all likelihood have the biggest long-term impact on society, he went verbally AWOL.
About Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg first came to prominence as a young, unknown vocalist used on several tracks on Dr. Dre’s groundbreaking 1992 album The Chronic. With his unique, sing-song style of delivery, overnight Dogg went from being an unsigned wannabe rapper to the biggest star in hip-hop, with a string of chart-topping, platinum selling albums.
Until he was displaced by Tupac and Biggie Smalls in the mid-1990s, Snoop ruled the roost as the no.1 selling rapper in the world, and while he has never quite regained that status (his last album only hit 148 on Billboard), and has largely lost relevance in recent years, he has maintained a very high public profile, and diversified into multiple businesses. Dogg has rubbed shoulders with the great and the good of politics, royalty and celebrity, and counts the likes of Princes William and Harry, David Beckham, Martha Stewart and Donald Trump as friends.
Had he taken the time to pledge his support publicly to Ripple and XRP, it would have gone some way in repairing the damage done the week before by Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger and Bill Gates.
Bad Week For Cryptocurrency
Snoop Dogg forgetting his words summed up what had been a truly bizarre week for the cryptocurrency market in general. In previous years, the Consensus Crypto & Blockchain Boosting Conference had been much smaller, yet triggered the digital currency market spectacularly. Last year, when the paid audience was no more than 3,000 people, the market went into complete overdrive, with sales of all the big coins going through the roof, raising the total cryptocurrency market cap value by around $500 billion to almost a trillion dollars come the end of the year.
This year, things could not have started any better; conference promoters CoinDesk were hopeful of a turnout of 5,000 paying customers, instead they squeezed 8,500 into the New York Hilton, who paid a live gate of $17 million. What’s more, the Consensus event was only the first of a whole bunch of smaller conferences held across Manhattan during what was the first ever New York Block chain Week. The crypto market has been performing somewhat erratically at best during the first months of 2018, especially compared to 2017, when it seemed like a week never went by without another record being smashed. Surely the market would enjoy a massive spike of interest off the back of a whole week of wheeling and dealing and profile raising.
$52 Billion Value Slump
Instead, what we now know is during New York Blockchain Week, the crypto market dropped in value by $52 billion. Even Bitcoin, the currency that looked set to benefit above all others last week, saw its value drop by more than 5%. Two weeks prior to the Consensus event, Bitcoin had looked set to hit the $10,000 mark, yet it exited the week with a value of just over $8,000.
Maybe the negative publicity poured onto the crypto industry by Warren Buffett and his “rat poison squared” comment, or Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger saying on CNBC that dabbling in cryptocurrency was a “scumball activity” affected the market far greater than we thought it would. Whatever the reason, 2019’s New York Blockchain Week will have to raise its game significantly.
Please, no more leased Lamborghinis out front, no more two-hour queues for an over-sold event, and never again will we pledge our faith that a washed up, middle-aged rapper will remember to say something positive about a major cryptocurrency, even though we knew from the outset that due to the man’s history of heavy narcotics abuse, that was always going to be a long shot!
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://www.bitmoneynews.com/ripple-news/snoop-dogg-fails-to-mention-ripple-at-ripples-own-party/