Google follows Facebook in banning all ads for cryptocurrency

Edward Munn March 14, 2018

Google is following Facebook in banning advertisements for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Google follows Facebook in banning all ads for cryptocurrency

On Tuesday, the company published a “New restricted financial products policy”, effective from June 2018, which bans ads for various financial services including “contracts for difference” and spread betting along with cryptocurrencies.

The post outlines that all content related to cryptocurrencies “including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice” will all be outlawed under the new terms.

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At the end of January, Facebook announced in a blog post that it was introducing a new policy that bans ads that promote “financial products and services” associated with “misleading or deceptive promotional practices” such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.”

Since Bitcoin’s value hit a three-month low in February, cryptocurrencies have widely come under fire. Last week, Europe’s largest insurer, Allianz Global Investors, published an article concluding that Bitcoin has “no intrinsic value” and that it’s a matter of “when, not if, the bitcoin bubble will pop”.

“In our view, [Bitcoin’s] intrinsic value must be zero: a bitcoin is a claim on nobody – in contrast to, for instance, sovereign bonds, equities or paper money – and it does not generate any income stream, wrote the company’s head of global economics and strategy, Stefan Hofrichter.

Allianz Global Investors’ criticisms followed similar comments from The Bank of England’s governor, Mark Carney, only a few days before. Speaking at the Scottish Economics Conference in Edinburgh on Friday via live video link, Carney claimed cryptocurrencies demonstrate all the hallmarks of a bubble and said they fail in their most basic function as money. “The time has come to hold the crypto-asset ecosystem to the same standards as the rest of the financial system,” he said.

For now, neither Allianz nor The Bank of England believe cryptocurrencies pose a major risk to the UK’s financial stability, thanks to their relatively small market size. Hopefully, now Google and Facebook have taken a stand, it will stay this way, and fewer people will risk their personal finances because of the lure of making a fast buck.