Facebook Bans Cryptocurrency Advertisements
Let me start out by saying: I’m on the record that I firmly believe Facebook is for old people and if it weren’t a digital log of my entire life then I would’ve deleted it by now. I also understand that they aren’t going away anytime soon because they know exactly what their doing over there. The acquisition of Instagram in 2012 is a pretty good indication of that.
With that said, this is some big news:
“Facebook announced that it was banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ICOs, in an effort to crack down on scams and fraud on the platform. The social giant said in a statement that any ads that violate the new policy would also be banned from other products like its Audience Network, which puts ads on third-party apps, and from Instagram.”
So, when I see Facebook shutdown a sea of income in a space they are actively competing to be the leader in, I tend to think there is something to it, ya know, since they don’t hate money. So it is far more likely that it goes a little beyond the reason they gave in the statement above.
It’s worth noting that Facebook’s board of directors includes two investors — Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel — whose firms have been prominent crypto backers. Facebook Messenger boss, David Marcus, is also on the board at the popular crypto exchange Coinbase.
It’s also worth noting that in his New Years resolution post on his personal Facebook he commented on decentralizing in tech:
“With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.”
“There are important counter-trends to this — like encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands
So this move seems to be a little counter-productive to that, no?
My theory: Facebook is getting ready to launch their own coin.
What’s yours?
