It was a roaring success.<\/p>\n
Coinbase claims it witnessed over 20 million hits in a single minute<\/a> on its special offer of $15 of free Bitcoin for new sign-ups.<\/p>\n Of course, take the visitors figure with a pinch of salt.<\/p>\n The number comes from the company itself, meaning the story could be summed up as \u201cCoinbase says its own advert was actually super, duper popular, thank you very much.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the numerical murkiness, we can agree it was a successful advert.<\/p>\n Yet this obscured a fundamental truth of the modern world: we really shouldn\u2019t scan random QR codes.<\/p>\n Yes, you can argue that the Coinbase advert wasn\u2019t \u201crandom\u201d \u2014 it was aired during one of the most prominent television spots in the world, after all \u2014 but that\u2019s missing the point.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s notable how many facets of the cryptocurrency world mimic social engineering scams,\u201d Max Eddy wrote for PC Mag<\/a>.<\/p>\n To put that another way, Coinbase is normalizing a potential security vulnerability. By running this advert, it gives people the impression that scanning a context-less QR code is, well, totally fine.<\/p>\n Not a good stance for a company that should secure your financial assets.<\/p>\n![\"DO](\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2022\/02\/DO-NOT-SCAN-THIS-QR-CODE.jpg\")