Google To Allow Cryptocurrency Ads: New Policy From October 2018

Google stops its cryptocurrency advertisements ban and now plans to let regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to buy advertisements in the United States and Japan, CNBC reports -September 25th. This announcement was followed by a similar move by Facebook earlier this year.

Google’s policy still bans ICOs, wallets, and trading advice, CNBC reported, mentioning Google’s updated policy page which guides to a list of banned products. https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/9142422

The October 2018 policy update said that “regulated cryptocurrency exchanges” would be allowed to advertise in the U.S. and Japan.

To do so, advertisers will have to be certified with Google for the specific country where their ads will appear, this process is said to begin in October. The policy will be applicable to all accounts that advertise these types of financial products, Google said.

Google was among the first of major platforms to declare it would no longer run ban cryptocurrency advertisements, in March 2018, due to an excess of prudence around the industry where there’s so much potential for high-profile scams.

Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat had also banned cryptocurrency advertisements, for related reasons.

Facebook announced in June 2018, that it would no longer ban all cryptocurrency advertisements, but would rather allow those from “pre-approved advertisers” instead. It excluded advertisements that supported binary options and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Forbes read, “The rollback suggests Google believes that regulators around the world (especially in the U.S. and Japan) are making real progress against the crypto criminals.”

When Google originally announced the ban cryptocurrency-related advertisements it affected the price of bitcoin which went down by approximately 10% for bitcoin, as well as most other major cryptocurrencies, are far down from their all-time highs at the beginning of the year.

Bitcoin expert and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, Chris Wilmer said:

“This is a positive step for well-established cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum. Bitcoin is a technological breakthrough, with many applications beyond being a new, better form of money.”

Wilmer mentions While platforms such as Google and Facebook need to be careful of false and ill-disposed cryptocurrency advertisements, banning advertisements is not the exact solution to the problem.

Wilmer also said that bitcoin has existed and continued to grow, despite all the varied predictions from many, and now that the world is realizing that this is an important technology and it is here to stay.

This withdrawal also shouldn’t come as a total surprise. At the time of the original ban, Google didn’t order out undoing it, but said it wanted to continue with “extreme caution.” Google’s Scott Spencer told CNBC at the time:

“We don’t have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we’ve seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it’s an area that we want to approach with extreme caution.”