Niamh Shackleton
An Ohio State University commencement ceremony took a very unexpected turn when one of its guest speakers started talking about Bitcoin.
Chris Pan, who describes himself as a social entrepreneur, investor, musician and keynote facilitator, recently gave a commencement speech at the university - and it was far from what students were expecting.
At one stage, Pan was urging the crowd to dance around to music, while he also began ranting about Bitcoin.
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"I encourage you to keep an open mind right now," he says in a video of the event that's been doing the rounds on Reddit.
"I see Bitcoin..." he continued, but was met with boos and groans from the audience before he'd even finished the sentence.
Prior to giving the unconventional speech, Pan had taken to his LinkedIn page to address his then-upcoming speech and said he was under the influence of ayahuasca - a South American psychoactive brew - when he wrote it.
Pan penned a week ago: "Got some help from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence) this week to write my commencement speech for 60k grads and family members at Ohio State University next Sunday.
"We are in challenging times - wanted something extra heartfelt. (Tried chatGPT but wasn’t that good)."
In the wake of him having since given the speech, people have responded to Pan's post and it's safe to say his unique monologue has divided opinion.
One person wrote: "Chris, I wasn’t at OSU’s graduation but from what I’ve heard and read, and as a fellow ‘99 OSU graduate, I’m disappointed, saddened, and embarrassed. A graduation speech is meant to motivate and uplift students, not promote a business or an agenda."
Another person added: "I was a graduate and I’m extremely upset I didn’t get a better speech. It was clear you were just trying to promote your business and didn’t care about providing a good message for the graduates."
Echoing similar sentiments, someone else commented: "The kids deserved better from you. I could tell you had a positive message in mind but you failed to articulate your thoughts clearly."
Pan has replied to some of the responses and apologized that the controversial speech has made people feel this way.
Elsewhere he said that he thinks there's been a bit of a 'misunderstanding'.
"I think there is a misunderstanding about what a graduation vs commencement speech is," he wrote to one aggrieved LinkedIn user. "Many of them never had a high school graduation and perhaps were wanting them (more retrospective) vs commencement is more forward looking."
Pan added that he 'working on a response to help make things right'.
Ohio State University has been approached for comment.