3 Ways the Google and Facebook Ban Is Good for the Crypto Market
Google has added to the worries of the cryptocurrency market and aspiring enthusiasts. Starting June 2018, the leading search engine will ban all advertisements related to cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, and related subjects.
It is hard to believe, but after the 1,400 percent rally of 2017, the cryptocurrency market has stumbled a lot, losing more than 50 percent of the market cap and value. For the past month, the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has been hanging between $8,000 and $11,000, which was roughly $20,000 at the end of the year 2018.
Earlier stumbles were caused by some regulatory and policy changes announced by China, South Korea, Japan, and some companies/regulators in the West. In January this year, Facebook announced that it is immediately banning all advertisements related to bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and services. The social networked dubbed it as a “part of an ongoing effort to improve the integrity and security of our ads, and to make it harder for scammers to profit from a presence on Facebook.”
The apparent reason behind all of these announcements (by companies, nations, and regulators) is to protect consumers from the scam, speculations, and deceitful practices.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google’s latest move has come amid an increased public interest in cryptocurrencies, which has led the scammers to use cryptocurrency ads and promote fake online schemes.
Google, on the other hand, has explained (through a blog post) that the ban will go into effect in June 2018 as part of an update to its financial services policy. Ads related to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice will also be negatively impacted.
“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,” says Scott Spencer, Google’s director of ads.
While these developments sound negative in general as legitimate businesses may be unable to advertise their products and services, analysts argue that this is actually a good development. According to their assessment, Google and Facebook’s ban on crypto related advertisements will help the market in three ways.
First, despite the increased popularity of cryptocurrencies, harmful ads and online scams are still holding the currency back. This ban will cripple the scammer’s ability to market their products and services – and will ultimately secure the common people from scams.
Secondly, it will help the enthusiasts move to the places where the real and legitimate crypto businesses are operating – like, social communities, relevant forums etc. Since a large majority of the investors do not come from Google ads, the announcement by Google will not impact their outreach or level of trust in the industry.
The last but not the least is very much related to market consolidation. Scammers and speculators were able to use advertisements, fake news, and social media, to create a fake frenzy and give an unprecedented hike to the cryptocurrency prices. With this move, they will not be able to push their spam content via social media or search, - and as a result, the market will cool down and customer interests will be safeguarded.
However, despite these advantages, we do hope that the ban by these leading technology companies is not permanent, and the market will find a solution to the speculation, frenzy, and scams. Businesses’ inability to use social or search networks to market their legitimate businesses is definitely not a good thing, as majority of Startups (across industries) try to generate leads from these channels.
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