Google to Lift Its 2018 Advertising Ban on Crypto Exchanges and Wallets

On Wednesday, June 2, tech giant Google announced that it shall lift its three-year-old advertising ban on exchanges and wallet service providers. Owing to the massive frenzy during the 2017 bull run, Google had introduced a ban in early 2018 preventing crypto firms from using its ad services to promote their services.

But just as the crypto market players become stronger, mature and legitimate, Google has decided to reverse its earlier decision. The recent policy update from the company’s support page reads: “Beginning August 3, advertisers offering Cryptocurrency Exchanges and Wallets targeting the United States may advertise those products and services when they meet the following requirements and are certified by Google”.

However, there are a few regulatory requirements that exchanges and wallets have to clear before accessing Google’s ad platform. This requires registration with “FinCEN as a Money Services Business and with at least one state as a money transmitter” or “a federal or state chartered bank entity”.

However, Google has still not opened the doors for all sorts of crypto activities. For e.g. Google continues to prohibit ads for initial coin offerings (ICOs), decentralized finance (DeFi) trading protocols, and other trading service providers.

The prohibition list further extends to companies offering crypto loans, pre-sales, token liquidity pools, Initial DEX Offerings, unhosted wallets, celebrity cryptocurrency endorsements, and unregulated decentralized applications (DApps).

The tech giant further added that it will also not allow “ad destinations that aggregate or compare issuers of cryptocurrencies or related products”. It further brackets crypto trading signals, aggregators, affiliate sites, cryptocurrency investment advice, and broker reviews.

However, the new advertisement policy certainly brings a fresh new development for regulated crypto firms to reach out to their potential clients. Crypto exchanges like Coinbase recently announced its public listing on Nasdaq in April 2021.

Thus, such exchanges and wallet service providers can battle out to gain more market share by pulling the right set of customers through advertisements.

Just like Google, other big online advertising platforms like Facebook also banned crypto firms from advertising on the platform. With the search giant making the recent move, it will be interesting to see whether if its competitors like FB also reverse their previous decision setting up a new war in the crypto advertising space.