Not even Scrabble could resist the allure of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Responsible for many a family feud, the popular word-based board game has now added Bitcoin and botnet, among many others – the New York Times reports .

Yesterday, the Mirriam-Webster dictionary added 300 new words to its list of accepted words that can be played in Scrabble.

Other less ‘blockchainy’ words include: Emoji, sheeple, twerk, zomboid, and beatdown.

You know, I regularly sit around the dining room table with my family after a nice meal telling them about Bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrency, tokens, and the like.

They hate me for it.

Now they can hate me even more, because I can do it while annihilating them at Scrabble too. Apparently, the word Bitcoin could score over 100 points if you use all seven tiles, and place it across double and triple word bonus’.

But come on, we have cryptocurrency emoji in Slack , we have Bitcoin iPhone glyphs , and now we have Bitcoin in Scrabble. Surely this is the mass adoption everyone has been talking about?

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This exchange turned a bus into a Bitcoin ad to bypass Google’s crypto-ban

Online advertising giants like Google and Facebook promised entrepreneurs an effective way of reaching consumers at an affordable cost. But following a series of policy crackdowns, this wasn’t exactly the case for cryptocurrency and blockchain businesses.

Pressed in a corner by draconian ad bans, one Netherlands-based cryptocurrency exchange found an alternative to Google’s and Facebook’s restrictive new rules in traditional out-of-house advertising. Instead of placing ads on the internet, SATOS turned a whole bus into an ad for its cryptocurrency exchange service.

“The idea of out-of-house marketing first came to us when most advertising platforms turned their back on cryptocurrencies,” SATOS marketing manager Stijn Jager told Hard Fork. “G oogle and Facebook didn’t allow us to advertise anymore. Which used to be our way (extremely targeted) of communicating with our target audience.”

(Note that both Google and Facebook have since revised their advertising policies to allow for certain cryptocurrency and blockchain-related campaigns.)

This is when it dawned on Jager: SATOS’s target audience might be a lot broader than he initially thought. “W hen Bitcoin became the talk at any office, everyone – literally everyone – was our target audience,” Jager told us. “We started thinking of a replacement for mainly Google.”

Soon after that, SATOS launched its first bus-ad in July. It didn’t take long before people started noticing.

Indeed, the “Amsterdam Bitcoin bus” quickly attracted the attention of crypto-enthusiasts on Reddit and Twitter.

“We praise ourselves of being unique and standing out,” Jager proudly told Hard Fork. “Not only the bus is unique, but the (Dutch) copy has inside jokes.” Referring to last year’s massive boom in the cryptocurrency market (which we all know didn’t last long ), the writing on the bus reads “Missed the bus? You can still get in [on the hype].”

I asked SATOS about the cost of decorating an entire bus with branding, and while Jager said advertising on a “bus is more cost-efficient than a tram,” he refrained from sharing the precise rates. This is absolutely fair. But I was still curious, so I forwarded my question to the ad spot owners themselves.

For the record, pretty much anyone can run a similar bus-ad campaign. Indeed, GVB – the Municipal Transport Company serving as public transport operator in Amsterdam – offers a line of advertising opportunities on its website .

GVB outsources its advertising efforts to creative agencies. I called the agency responsible for placing ads on buses, JCDecaux, and (even though I made it clear I just have questions about one of the campaigns they brokered) I was quickly directed to one of their account managers.

Despite identifying myself as a journalist, the account manager ignored my questions (perhaps due to admittedly spotty network connection) and directly laid out their bus-ad rates. You know how it goes: sales people gonna sell. It turns out it costs $285 (or €250 in local rates) to run a small ad spot on a bus for a week.

Fully immersed in my act as an accidental ad buyer, I inquired about the costs of adorning the entire bus in ads. According to the account manager in question, each bus has about 10 ad spots, worth €250 each. So, you can practically run your own ad-bus for about €2,500 a week.

For those of you wondering how effective the bus ad was, Jager says SATOS is “ very happy with the reach and attention” the campaign generated.

Still, Jager is quick to clarify the campaign aimed to raise brand awareness rather than attract new users. “Advertising on buses is pretty new. With this campaign, we prioritized impact over gross reach, ” Jager told Hard Fork. “ We’d rather reach 20 people who take a picture of the bus and share it with friends, than of reaching 200 people who simply pass by the ad.”

Sure, perhaps there are better ways to get people into cryptocurrency trading than appealing to a hype cycle that left tons of naive investors with empty pockets. But hey: it’s definitely an improvement over fake partnership announcements.

Disclaimer: This is in no way an endorsement of any products or companies mentioned in this report. The aim of this piece is to merely shed light on cryptocurrency-specific advertising trends and further explore the current state of advertising in the blockchain industry.

SEC temporarily ceases trading of obscure Bitcoin and Ethereum securities

The US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) has initiated a suspension of its cryptocurrency-based Exchange-Traded Notes (ETN). But don’t worry, it’s only temporary.

In an announcement made yesterday, the SEC declared a suspension of trading in the ETN securities known as Bitcoin Tracker One (CXBTF) and Ether Tracker One (CETHF).

It appears that this temporary ban has been instigated because there is still much confusion in the market over these trading instruments.

The pause in trading will last only until September 21. So anyone interested in trading these cryptocurrency ETNs can do so starting from that date.

An ETN is a form of debt security . It is unsecured which means it’s not backed by an equal value of collateral, and it is unsubordinated which means that it ranks higher in priority over other types of security.

By buying an ETN you buy into an agreement that the seller will pay you at regular intervals based on the value of the good that the ETN is tied to. In this case Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Though ETNs shouldn’t be confused with Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), as they are subtly different products.

As Invetopedia puts it: “ETNs are structured products that are issued as senior debt notes, while ETFs represent a stake in an underlying commodity. ETNs are more like bonds in that they are unsecured. ETFs provide investments into a fund that holds the assets it tracks, like stocks, bonds or gold.”

Despite ETN’s being long-standing trading instruments, it would seem that the SEC still needs more time to clarify exactly how the trading of CXBTF and CETHF should work.

This news brings another hurdle for the market due to the SEC’s continued involvement in the cryptocurrency space. Though the markets do have a history of figuring these things out.

Indeed, the SEC once declared Ethereum as too decentralized to be classed as a security. Despite that, the market managed to make inroads to cryptocurrency trading through the use of ETNs.