Facebook has banned all advertisements promoting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), and anything related to cryptocurrency. This is very bad news for businesses revolving around cryptocurrencies because Facebook is one of the most important advertisement platforms.
The Reason
Facebook has updated its advertisement policy with a new rule, prohibiting advertisements that promote financial products & services associated with ‘misleading or deceptive promotional practices’ and has given examples of binary options, initial coin offerings (ICOs), or cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.
This doesn’t mean that all businesses revolving around cryptocurrencies will not be able to advertise their product & service on Facebook. Facebook will be allowing legitimate advertisements by such businesses, once they do figure out how to regulate them.
Here’s what Facebook’s Product Management Director, Rob Leathern wrote in the recent blog post about the new ads policy –
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs, and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.
“This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up”
“We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”
They also mentioned that they probably will not be able to catch every advertisement not agreeing to this policy, and thus encourages the community to report those ads. So go ahead and report any ads that say anything like the classic “Use your retirement funds to buy Bitcoin”, “IQ Option, Easy money”, “New ICO, buy at a great discount”.
Bitcoin fell by a monstrous 50% this month. Combining this with the recent monstrous 50% drop, this is not a good time for cryptocurrencies. Also for binary trading, which already is very risky.