Climber Dies on Mount Everest During ASKfm Cryptocurrency Promotional Stunt

A man died on a climb up Mount Everest during a promotional stunt for a new cryptocurrency from the website ASKfm.

ASKfm, a popular social media site amongst teenagers, is planning on launching a cryptocurrency. To publicize their Initial Coin Offering (ICO), ASKfm sent a group to the top of Mount Everest to promote the launch of the cryptocurrency. One of the men, Lam Babu Sherpa, a three-time climber of the mountain, went missing during the trek up the mountain and has been presumed dead.

According to a report from SFGate, the plan was to bury $50,000 worth of ASKfm’s new coin at the top of the mountain. In a blog post, ASKfm announced that the Mount Everest stunt was designed to prove that the company is “not afraid to rise to challenges.”

The statement here is that ASKfm is not at all afraid to rise to challenges. They’re conquering Everest because it’s out there to conquer. By doing so they claim: if they’re bold enough to do it, they’re bold enough to turn a social network into a blockchain ecosystem, and they’re definitely bold enough to overturn the market with their new product.

The blog post went on to explain that the stunt was a play on a popular meme in the cryptocurrency community. Members of the cryptocurrency community use the phrase “to the moon” to refer to the idea of their coins skyrocketing in value. ASKfm wrote that sending the team to the peak of Mount Everest was their way of bringing their coins as close to the moon as possible.

While others try sophisticated marketing techniques, these guys went out there and put themselves right on top of the highest mountain on the planet. An elegant way to boast ideological superiority to every other crypto. A way quite strangely unexplored before. Even memes-wise, think about the closest starting point to reach the moon. It seems so obvious, yet no one has done it.

Despite Sherpa’s death, ASKfm announced that the coins will stay on the mountain. It remains to be seen if someone will venture up the mountain to claim the coins in the aftermath of the tragedy.