What Is Tiger King Coin? Surge (and Fall) in Cryptocurrency as Season 2 Airs on Netflix – Newsweek

Tiger King became a global phenomenon at the start of the pandemic, leading to thousands of podcasts and articles (as well as two rival dramas based on the show, only one of which is still in development as of 2021).

Though Joe Exotic has been unable to watch the show from prison and celebrate his fame, he has found a way of profiting from his global exposure.

In May, he launched his own cryptocurrency, Tiger King Coin, the price of which has been going up and down following the release of Tiger King Season 2.

Tiger King Coin (which trades under the symbol $TKING) was launched by the official Joe Exotic Twitter page in May with the message: "My Official Tiger King coins will help me fix children's smiles/faces, fight justice and prison reform, and save animals in the wild."

On its website, the creators of Tiger King Coin describe their project with some typical crypto-jargon: "TKING forged a new day in crypto where media profile combines with use case. The mystique of the Tiger lent to the coin by Joe Exotic's endorsement attracted a resource rich community. Their innovations will reach a wider audience than the crypto-sphere thanks to the public interest in Joe."

As that makes (somewhat) clear, the currency wasn't founded by Joe himself. He should be considered as a kind of celebrity endorser for it though unlike fellow celebrity crypto endorsers like Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather, the branding of Tiger King Coin relies much more heavily on Joe's name and story.

Per the Tiger King Coin website, Joe himself owns 1 percent of the total amount of the cryptocurrency available. At the time of writing, the total value of all the Tiger King Coin available was about $75 million, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

This means that Joe has about $750,000 of Tiger King Coin.

Joe Exotic's rival (and the woman he is in prison for attempting to murder), Carole Baskin, also released a cryptocurrency around the same time, $CAT, described in a press release as "not a currency for investment, but rather is a purr-ency of our fans to show their love for the cats."

As with any cryptocurrency, trading is hugely volatile.

What we can say, however, is that on the release day of Tiger King 2, the currency rose in price, only to then fall again. Per CoinGecko, the value of the currency hit its daily peak at about 7 a.m., an hour before the new season came out. At that point, one Tiger King Coin was worth $0.00022546 (meaning you would need to have about 4,450 of them to have a dollar's worth).

Surprisingly, since the show has come out, and interest in Joe Exotic has been renewed, the currency has dipped in price. Over the last 24 hours, the value of the currency has halved.

This is in comparison to the value of $CAT, which is currently up 12 percent after the release of the documentary. Each $CAT coin is far more valuable that $TKING too at the time of writing it was trading at around 50 cents a coin.

Tiger King 2 is streaming now on Netflix.

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What Is Tiger King Coin? Surge (and Fall) in Cryptocurrency as Season 2 Airs on Netflix - Newsweek