First Bitcoin Video Appears on TikTok, as Reward Halving Approaches

Bitcoin has had a pretty good year despite the recent slump in price. Price is an easy metric to use to judge Bitcoin, as it still stands at about 100 percent higher than the value it started the year with. Another metric that cryptocurrency and blockchain insiders look for is adoption and familiarity.

On these metrics as well, the premier cryptocurrency has seen tremendous growth. Earlier this week, a video about Bitcoin went viral on TikTok- social media platform which seems to be the hottest millennial trend right now. The video, which was shared by crypto entrepreneur Thomas Schulz, showed a room full of mining equipment, with a caption that read, “This is why GPU prices went down.” It followed mentions of the asset by some high-profile investors, and it marked the first time that a video about Bitcoin will go viral on TikTok.

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Bitcoin Gets More Attention from Digital Media

This isn’t the first time that Bitcoin will be getting some mention on a popular media channel in recent months. Back in November, comedian and TV show host mentioned the asset and blockchain on his program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In the sketch, Colbert made fun of U.S. President Donald Trump, who was at a rally in Louisiana.

At his rally, Trump had asked the crowd,

“Off the top of my head, the DMV, the dentist, someone else’s child’s clarinet recital, a Soviet gulag, covered in honey and staked to an anthill, sliding down a 50-foot razor blade into a bathtub of gin, and in conversation with someone who knows a lot about bitcoin,” the renowned comedian quipped.

Likewise, Emmy-winning TV show host John Oliver devoted an entire segment of his show, Last Week Tonight, to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology last year. The segment covered simple explanations of what the concepts are and the problems they hope to solve, as well as the fact that some crypto and blockchain projects have been particularly fraudulent.

It might not seem like a ringing endorsement of Bitcoin, but the fact that the asset has been mentioned by a lot of media houses shows that it is beginning to make more of an entry into the minds of people.

TikTok Could Get Blockchain Application

As for TikTok itself, the app is heavily linked with the blockchain. On December 14, Bloomberg reported that ByteDance, the app’s parent company, has launched a venture with the Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper, a state-owned media group, to develop business models which will include AI and blockchain technology.

Although the end users of this service- as well as what ByteDance hopes to achieve with it- remain unknown, the report notes that TikTok could benefit from the use of blockchain. The platform’s short video feed is managed by a purpose-built AI, which predicts and provide content based on users’ perceived preferences.