Facebook to ban crypto coin ads

Facebook has initiated a ban on advertisements for cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings on its platform.

Product management director Rob Leathern said in a blog post that the social network was cracking down on ads for financial products that are “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices”.

These included “binary options, initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency".

It said it was taking action to stem the rise in advertisements for discounts on new ICOs or those encouraging crypto buys while underplaying the risks involved.

“There are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith,” Leathern said.

“This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network. and Instagram.

“We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”

Leathern said the company wanted to make it “harder for scammers to profit from a presence on Facebook".

The crypto boom of late 2017 has seen an enormous rise in new crypto coin proposals.

The chief of Chinese exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, earlier this month said he had received more than 5000 applications for new virtual coin listings in the six months that the exchange had been operating.

Zhao said his major problem was sifting out the “bad players, scammers” and projects with little prospect of providing any value to investors.

He also alleged he had frequent approaches from people running ICOs “saying I’ll give you US$2 million to list this coin for me”.

The crypto world continues to experience mixed fortunes.

While Brisbane Airport was revealed this week to be a new backer of coins as an acceptable virtual currency, others like Stripe and Steam have recently withdrawn support for virtual coin payment options.

The hack of Tokyo-based Coincheck has also reconfirmed the risks associated with investing in “alt-coins” - that is, currency outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Most coins are well off the highs they experienced back in late December 2017, though they appear to have stabilised.