Yesterday's move by search giant Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to ban ads for a variety of financial instruments including ICOs and cryptocurrencies—which follows a similar ban by Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), announced in January—hit Bitcoin hard. The leading cryptocurrency dropped 11% during the day, reaching an intraday low of $7,955 at one point, though it has since recovered.
Could this be the death knell for digital currencies? Judging by the defiant reaction of proponents of the asset class, hardly.
Blockchain specialists and marketing experts do warn, however, that this could mean a shift in business and advertising spending, with funds going to blockchain-focused platforms instead. Here's the gist of Google's announcement, from a blog post published Tuesday:
“In June 2018, Google will update the Financial services policy to restrict the advertisement of Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting. In addition, ads for the following will no longer be allowed to serve:
Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice)."
Many have actually shrugged this move off, noting that different sorts of marketing channels are what's needed now anyway.
Cécile Baird, co-founder of a marketing agency for blockchain start-ups and co-founder of Blockchain For Good (BC4G), a think tank aiming to bring together individuals from around the world to explore and debate the development of blockchain, serially tweeted:
Erhan Korhaliller, founder and CEO of EAK Digital, a PR and marketing agency specializing in blockchain, says:
"Google's ban, which closely follows Facebook's ban on advertising cryptocurrencies is a blow only for lazy marketers and shouldn't stop the best projects getting the attention they deserve. What we are likely to see is increased costs of display ads on cryptocurrency sites ."
Disruptive Threat To Google?
Crypto enthusiast Dean Fankhauser, founder of Tokentalk, a network for crypto investors, wonders if there isn't a less visible agenda at work.
“I find it curious that Facebook, Google, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) are yet to embrace blockchain in any significant way.
Not only are they not embracing it, they seem to be defensive towards it. I can’t help but wonder if this is potentially another defensive move against a technology that could be more of a threat than an opportunity to them. Their excuse is that it’s an unregulated space with too many scams.
Once regulated, I wonder if they’ll change their stance?”
Eyal Oster, president and founder of Momentum disagrees. Given the unregulated nature of most cryptocurrencies and ICOs, and taking into account the bad apples that have used this and other financial instruments to inflict monetary damage to investors around the world, it's understandable, and a positive, that Google is trying to protect users from cryptocurrency scams and unethical ICOs.
However, as with so many things, due diligence is always a must:
“On the other hand, the blockchain and legitimate cryptocurrencies do represent strong technological innovation as well as new business models which drive value and wealth creation for the overall, as acknowledged by the chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who testified before the [U.S.'s] Senate Banking Committee. It is therefore important to distinguish between the ethical and innovative initiatives and the malicious ones.”
Many will look for other platforms to help reach potential investors. Shmulik Grizim, CEO of LeadCoin believes it's time for a blockchain alternative to disrupt the Google and Facebook duopoly.
Grizim questions whether banning advertising to the entire consumer market is really the best protection a centralized power such as Google can offer. He points out that in web marketing there is no vacuum. If Google and Facebook abdicate, alternative solutions will likely step in.
And among the alternatives, some will actually be blockchain-based.
“Blockchain is enabling decentralized networks where publishers and advertisers who don't know each other can perform trusted transactions with no middleman.The restriction seems targeted at B2C financial markets. In these markets you'd unfortunately find some consumer scam attempts, which, it seems, Google is trying to prevent.”
Another blockchain specialist, Adi Ben-Ari, founder and CEO of Applied Blockchain, shares this view, but goes a bit further. She believes that even if cryptocurrency advertising disappears on the sites of these social media and search giants, they'll each continue to help drive the development of the still-burgeoning cryptocurrency asset class. After all, they're both platforms that enable and contribute to open source projects:
“The ICO phenomenon has produced a tremendous amount of genuine innovation. The work behind many of the white papers and code that has been published and made open enables everyone to benefit and advances to be made. This is open innovation in action. Google has itself contributed to some of the most widely used and significant open source projects.”