Facebook Reverses the Ban on Crypto ads

By Kapil Gauhar

After a history of a controversial ban by Facebook on Cryptocurrency advertisements, the social media platform has reversed its decision to ban and will now allow some pre-approved ads to run on its platform. Hence, the advertisers will now be allowed to promote crypto businesses and services on Facebook.

Interested advertisers will have to fill out an application form that would give information whether the crypto services are publicly traded and the form would have licensing information of the company as well. However, advertising for binary options and ICOs are still banned.

As reported by CNN, a ban by Facebook was put for cryptocurrency advertisements during January 2018 run-up and ICO fascination. This time reported a lot of ICO scams and owing to this, Facebook banned the crypto ads. This decision was taken to protect the social media platform’s users from theft and fraud. The original ban happened when the Bitcoin was booming and the unregulated space was leading to a lot of scams.

After Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat and other social media platforms followed a similar decision to ban such ads. The ban provoked a lot of backlash from crypto fans which saw this move as anti-contemplative and disturbing to legal businesses. According to CNN reports, leaders of financial sector spoke publicly against the ban with cryptocurrency groups from Russia and Asia going ahead to file suits against Facebook.

Many suggested that Facebook was doing so to eliminate its competitors if and when the platform plans to launch its own Blockchain. According to a CNN report, the company also roped in Coinbase board member to run their Blockchain initiate.

Facebook’s widespread ban on cryptocurrencies is being lifted after Google decided to do so in the month of March. The search giant announced that its own crackdown on cryptocurrency related ads would begin in June.