Some breaking news came up yesterday and earlier and on top of that, Facebook is banning ICOs and other cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin on their advertising platform.
It is just another example of people coming down on cryptocurrencies. We got the government doing it big-time. Also the politicians do. We also get social media doing it. So now we got Mark Zuckerberg, so let's go ahead and see what's going on.
Weeks ago, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg promised heād spend the new year studying cryptocurrencies. Apparently, heās spent the interim studying scammy crypto ads on Facebook, too, as the popular social media platform is banning ādeceptive promotional practicesā related to cryptocurrencies henceforth.
Source
According to CNBC,Facebook bans promoting bitcoin as well as all cryptocurrencies and initial coin offering with the new āintentionally broadā policy that says advertisements must not include financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive practices in a blog post earlier. They will potentially work to detect deceptive ads and policies prior to revising this policy and how it is enforced.
That means no advertiser ā even those that operate legal, legitimate businesses ā will be able to promote things like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings ā ICOs for short ā or binary options, according to a Facebook blog post. That also means that "crypto-genius" James Altucher, whose ads have appeared all over the internet and have become a meme of sorts for the entire crypto industry, won't be able to advertise on Facebook. Ads that violate the company's new policy will be banned on Facebook's core app, but also in other places where Facebook sells ads, including Instagram and its ad network, Audience Network, which places ads on third-party apps. Source
It seems like weāre collecting a pile of bad news nowadays! -But let me share with you some laughable content:
Earlier, an anonymous developer had launched āPonzicoinā, a cryptocurrency which was explicitly and transparently a pyramid scheme. Despite the coin being largely satirical, with its site full of wry commentary on the wider cryptocurrency sector, it genuinely existed ā and sold in such large quantities that the developer was forced to shut down direct sales, ābecause this was a jokeā. Source
Are People Still Interested in Cryptos?
Now, if we look at Google trends to see how many people are searching for anything with bitcoin in it, we will see that the numbers went down significantly in the google search engine. It skyrocketed in December and tripled in terms of total number of searches worldwide and that apparently correlates to the increased number of new wallets from 5% monthly to over 10% in December. Many people thought that the rally would continue to the skies but since early January, this volume has come way down and wide across the board.
More Insights
Under āProhibited Products and Servicesā, the policy says: āAds must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with deceptive or misleading promotional practices such as binary options, initial coin offerings or cryptocurrency.ā - Thatās not a good look. So Facebook basically says that these three things, binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrency are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices. This particular statement puts everything and everyone in the cryptocurrency space in bad light. Although ordinary people donāt usually advertise on Facebook, this could still impact those who legitimately earn a living with cryptocurrencies. What more, we can only find Online Gambling in the āRestricted Contentā section, though there are lots and lots of scams and bad press associated with online gambling.
Going through this Facebook advertising policy news, I think is bad and it is good. I get the premise of the ban on cryptocurrency as there are people that are getting victimized by people that are taking advantage of the new technology in a bad way. They are scamming people and even without scamming, we can see lots and lots of people taking unnecessary risks. This puts their money and families in bad situations. While I agree with trying to stop that, Some do not agree that it's Facebookās duty, especially because in stopping all crypto-ads, they really hinder a lot of great creative projects that want to advertise. Hopefully, they will figure out how to solve this problem on facebook really soon.
Itā a double-edged sword. -You cut something down but you cut down good stuff too.
Well, some even say that maybe Facebook just wants to launch its own ICO. -That would be great if they use some sort of āFacebook Dollarsā to reward good content. Who knows?! On the other hand, the new ads policy is aimed to improve integrity and security of ads for financial products and services. Only time will tell where exactly this is headed.
Looking at it as well as other news about governmentsā take on cryptos, overall, it still seems everyone wants āa piece of the pieā. If we approach these issues is simplistic and generalistic manner, it seems to boil down to ādistributionā. Those who want more keep taking action, redistributing peoplesā money in a good or bad way.
