In every sense of the phrase, the cryptocurrency world is without a doubt the 21st-century rendition of what was referred to as the Wild West. That said, it should not come as a surprise that, like the Wild West, we will definitely get treated to the good, the bad, and, of course, the ugly. However, there has been so much of the bad and the ugly going around that regulators and Facebook have become fed up.
The social media platform recently unveiled a new advertising policy that will have huge impacts on how people interact and consume content pertaining to cryptocurrencies, initial coin offering (ICOs) as well as binary options. Narrowing down to the specifics, Facebook Product Management Director Rob Leathern clarified that the new policy is a move against advertisements that promote products and services “that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive practices.”
Advertisers will no longer be allowed to promote cryptocurrency related products and services regardless of whether they are legitimate or not. Any advertiser that violates Facebook’s new policy will not only be banned on the core app but also in all of its other ad selling platforms such as its ad network, Instagram and Audience Network which puts advertisements on third-party apps.
On the same day that Facebook announced its new policy, there was also news of United States regulatory activity that targeted cryptocurrency issuers. This included a move by the Securities and Exchange Commission to shut down an ICO that is backed by former boxer Evander Holyfield. Little is known about the future of the regulatory measures that the authorities are now implementing. Facebook, on the hand, says that the decision is not permanent and that it will revisit the rules later when it perfects its ad detection and removal algorithms.
“This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across Facebook, Instagram, and its off-platform Audience Network, “ wrote Leathern. “We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”
Tides Get Rockier for Bitcoin
The move by Facebook and regulators in the United States did a number on bitcoin’s price – its price plummeted to below $10,000 just a few weeks after it climbed to a record high of $19,000. The wider crypto market took a hit as well with almost all of the top 50 altcoins experiencing price drops of over 10 percent.
Surprisingly though, the Facebook ban has been welcomed quite well on social media, especially by detractors of the crypto craze and supporters of decentralized digital currencies who want cryptocurrencies to be portrayed in a more legitimate fashion. There have also been speculations that claim that Facebook plans to launch its own digital currency to be used on the platform. Others think it is a play that intends to censor cryptocurrencies. Either way, it is about time that such measures were put in place to tone down the chaotic nature of the crypto world.
