Grammy Award-winning artist Mariah Carey has become the latest celebrity to accept Bitcoin (BTC) through the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, indicating that digital assets are becoming more mainstream.
Carey said Tuesday that she is teaming with Gemini to encourage Bitcoin use and support girls of colour in their pursuit of STEM degrees — a broad academic category that refers to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — in a video message to her 10.2 million Instagram followers.
Carey acknowledged in the video that she invests in Bitcoin through Gemini. She also gave her followers a referral code that they could use to get $20 in free BTC.
“Did you know that you don’t have to acquire an entire Bitcoin in order to invest?” “In fact, you can buy them for as low as $5,” she explained.
Carey attributes her knowledge of bitcoin investing to Cryptopedia, Gemini’s free education tool.
Users who join up for Gemini through the referral link will make a direct donation to Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization that teaches African-American girls about technology.
While early crypto investors were seen as forerunners for investing in Bitcoin before the major financial institutions, celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on a large part of the market.
According to a Morning Consult poll of 2,200 adults in the United States conducted in September, 45 percent of cryptocurrency users would seek exposure to a cryptocurrency if it was sponsored by a celebrity.
Celebrities have gained a lot of clout in the nascent nonfungible token (NFT) market, which has already received billions of dollars in funding this year.
Despite the inflated expectations, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, believes that celebrities can steer the NFT market toward socially beneficial projects.
