Crypto Featured in British Soap Coronation Street With 8 Million Viewers

Cryptocurrency is a major plot of the longest-running British soap opera Coronation Street this week. Each of the show’s episodes currently has about 8 million viewers. A character in the show invested in a cryptocurrency back in 2011. After some research, he thinks he is sitting on a fortune.

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Crypto in Coronation Street

Cryptocurrency is one of the main plots of this week’s Coronation Street episodes, aired on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The popular show has been on ITV since December 1960, making it Britain’s longest-running soap opera. In June, the show won the Best Soap category of this year’s British Soap Awards. Overall, it has won six times since 1999 when the awards began.

Forbes described on Tuesday, September 11:

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have found an unlikely home: on British soap opera Coronation Street, a TV programme watched by some eight million people per episode.

In Monday’s episode, Ryan Conner, played by Ryan Prescott, revealed that he had some cryptocurrency. He told his friend, Ali Neeson, that he purchased a cryptocurrency called whipcoin many years ago to use on the dark web but never got around to spending it.

Conner said he bought 5 whipcoins at about £10 (~US$13) each. “It was 2011, something like that,” he recalled. When Neeson questioned that he never thought to check how much the coins are now worth, Conner replied “Knowing my luck, 5 pence? Nothing?” He was, however, gobsmacked when Neeson told him that 5 whipcoins are probably worth about £250,000 (~$326,400) today.

In 2011, only BTC had a price that reached $13, rising from about $1 at the beginning of the year to about $31 in July before falling to less than $5 in December. There were periods when its price was roughly $13. That year, very few altcoins existed; those that did were not traded on an exchange. In April 2011, namecoin launched and became the first altcoin. By the year’s end, there were also ixcoin, swiftcoin, and litecoin. However, none of the altcoins had the profile described by Conner.

BTC’s price chart on Mtgox for 2011.

Big Surprise

According to Hello Magazine, in Wednesday’s episode, “Ryan’s frustrated when he can’t remember his password to his whipcoin account so can’t access his new fortune. He [then] remembers that he wrote it down in a Gazza book, and the search commences.”

In Friday’s episode, the magazine described, “Ryan has a lightbulb moment and remembers his whipcoin password, he excitedly logs on only to discover his investment has decreased significantly.”

What do you think of Coronation Street featuring cryptocurrency this week? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, ITV, and Bitcoincharts.

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