PRESS KIT

What Live Throne is

Live Throne is a continuous auction for the most expensive ad slot on the internet. There is one #1 “crown” slot — the biggest, most prominent placement on the board — plus a ranked leaderboard of every other paid advertiser, ordered live by amount paid. Brands, creators, and crypto projects bid real money; the highest bid takes the crown and holds it until someone outbids them, while every past winner is immortalized in the Pantheon, our permanent hall of fame. The spectacle is the product: watching live bidding wars and dethrone moments is the reason people show up — and showing up is what makes the slot valuable.

How it works — in three steps

1. 01

   Brands bid real money.

   Anyone can place a bid — a Stripe hold is taken when you bid, and only the current leader's money is held. Get outbid and your hold is released. Verification and creative review happen before a bid goes public, so what's on the wall is always legitimate.

2. 02

   The highest bid takes the crown.

   Higher bids push lower ones down the board in real time, with names and amounts public — ego needs the name on it. Dethroning someone requires beating their bid by a tiered increment (10% under $1,000, down to 3% over $100,000).

3. 03

   The crown never resets; legends live forever.

   There are no seasons and no finales — the race runs continuously and the crown stays up for auction. Past winners are never erased — the Pantheon records every crown holder, amount paid, and reign length.

Key facts

First crown auction

The inaugural auction. Date to be announced.TBD

Race length

Continuous — the race never resets; the crown stays up for auction.

Launch stunt

The first crown starts at $1 — the opening bid is symbolic; the market decides the rest.

Minimum entry

$50 takes the lowest open slot once the board is full — no $1 spam cheapening the wall.

Real money

Every bid is a real Stripe hold; the winner's hold is captured at close. Refundable deposits for inaugural-race bidders if the event doesn't hit its minimum threshold.

Website

livethrone.com

Platform name

Live Throne — the most expensive ad on the internet.

The founder story

Live Throne was built by Hyung, who drives for a living in the Toronto area and builds software in the hours around his shifts — between runs, late at night, and in the gaps most people spend scrolling. He didn't come from ad tech or venture capital; he had a thesis about status and the internet — that the most valuable ad slot wouldn't be the best-targeted one, but the most visible one — and he built it himself to find out.

That's the honest version of the story: a full-time driver who decided the internet's most expensive ad should be decided the way every expensive thing is decided — by auction, in public, with real money. Season 1 is the test. If the crown pops, the platform gets built. If it doesn't, it gets killed cheaply — and he'll tell you which one happened.

Why this is a story

• The Million Dollar Homepage lineage. In 2005, a student sold a million pixels at $1 each and became an internet legend. Live Throne is the auction-house descendant of that idea — except instead of fixed pixels, there's one crown, live bidding, and the price is decided by how badly people want it.
• Status economics, made legible. Conspicuous consumption has a 100-year literature (Veblen, 1899) and almost no public auctions. Live Throne puts the price of status on a live leaderboard — every bid is a number, with a name on it, in real time.
• The spectacle is the business model. The auction drama — dethrone moments, anti-snipe extensions, the livestreamed countdown — is the audience engine. The story covers itself: every finale produces a clip of someone losing the internet's #1 ad.
• Crypto and creators are the first bidders. The launch targets one-decision-maker buyers who move fast and live on status: mid-tier creators, crypto projects, DTC brands. Their bidding wars are content for their own channels — which means the marketing loop feeds itself.

Media contact & brand assets

Press inquiries: press@livethrone.comPlaceholder — final address TBD

Brand assets: the Live Throne wordmark and crown mark are the SVG logo used across the site — gold (#d4a437) crown on near-black (#050507), shown here:

Use the mark as-is: don't recolor it, stretch it, or place it on light backgrounds. High-resolution versions and founder photos available on request from the press contact above.

Prefer to see it live first? Watch the wall or browse the Pantheon.