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Google bans cryptocurrency ads

686 points by em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

tobiaswk 9y ago
Good. The amount of crazy ICO's I've seen is staggering. Most of them are surely scams in some sense. Reddit is filled with them.
- saintPirelli 9y ago
  I'd actually go as far as to say that ICOs are fraudulent by nature. The ones that are not fraudulent by intent just have no idea what they are actually doing.
  - filesystem 9y ago
    They know exactly what they are doing. They are raising massive funds in an extremely short period of time with no direct obligation to provide returns to shareholders.
    - saintPirelli 9y ago
      I like to think that some of them at least try to advertise them fairly (as some kind of crypto-kickstarter campaign), but I agree that any company that raises millions in a few days or mere hours without owing anybody anything in return is bound to fail due to a massive lack of incentive to produce.
    - Barrin92 9y ago
      >They know exactly what they are doing Yep, it's deliberate. They're the backalley version of a regular stock offering. They're marketing themselves as "opening investments up to the people" but they're simply a way to get money from investors without any of the very reasonable legal securities and obligations that come with a company going public.
- aws_ls 9y ago
  Mixed feelings on this one. Most of them are likely to be scams as its so easy to do. But there are also things like the Brave browser[1] with its BAT(Basic Attention Token)[2], which am very excited about. With the Ad revenue on Internet falling all around, with Ad-blockers increasing. Brave, with BAT, provides a new way for publishers to get paid. Interestingly it also has the potential to disrupt Google's Adsense model. So there is an interesting element of incumbent (Google) and disruptor (brave) in there. [1] https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ [2] https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#meaning https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#meaning edit: typo
  - Taek 9y ago
    The vast majority of cryptocurrency advertising is aimed directly at taking advantage of investors who probably don't know how to do proper diligence on such an early and untested technology. I would put this squarely in the same vein as ads that might encourage you to 'buy our gemstone, it's going to be the new diamond'. Or 'our baseball cards are first edition and guaranteed to go up in value', etc.
    - nkrisc 9y ago
      I always thought the "guaranteed to go up in value" claim was silly. If it's guaranteed to go up in value, why would they want to sell it to me?
      - Taek 9y ago
        Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. If you have idle capital and I have something valuable, I can cash in sooner and you can get a valuable resource. So there is a legitimate reason for me to sell you something that is guaranteed to go up in value assuming that I want money now more than you do. That's not an endorsement of any asset in the crypto space, and I would never remotely suggest that any token today is guaranteed to go up in value.
        Sangermaine 9y ago
- iamben 9y ago
  What I think is most bizarre - I have friends with really decent businesses that try really, really hard to get a few hundred thousand in funding. And yet I see the most _terrible_ ideas with an ICO cap of 20 million dollars. Still people throw in the cash. Ideas with literally no need for a blockchain. But "everyone will be able to spend the token on [insert terrible idea]!" 'The most bespoke electric hypercar! With blockchain!' http://www.arrinera.io/ http://www.arrinera.io/ - I mean really?! I heard someone talking about "LGBT on the blockchain" the other day - "We'll aim for a conservative $40million ICO." Ridiculous.
  - Aunche 9y ago
    How much money is actually raised during ICOs? Market cap is based on marginal pricing, so it's completely meaningless in a cryptocurrency.
    - brightball 9y ago
      I always wonder who actually validates the money when somebody says they raised $20 mil in a private ICO. What keeps people from just claiming that to make other investors more willing and give an appearance of legitimacy?
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    People aren't buying those coins because they think there's a good idea there. They're buying them because they think they'll get rich quick and be able to cash out.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > decent businesses that try really, really hard to get a few hundred thousand in funding At a certain point I have to wonder if this is working along the lines of a lemon market. Coin investors don't know for certain whether they're being scammed, so they want an offer that will have positive expectation even after adjusting for scam risk. But founders do know, somewhat, the value of their ideas - and honest players are bounded by what they can actually return, while the deluded or dishonest can promise the moon. Eventually it only becomes possible to get investments by lying to people. There are forces that should act as a brake here, of course; a sober idea asking for $200k ought to have lower risk than a stupid idea asking for $20M. But for some reason, that sort of risk discrimination isn't really happening at the moment. Maybe investors are over-eager, maybe the scam rate is so high at all price points to bury useful information, but it certainly looks like bad ideas are actually doing better.
_aeneas 9y ago
I believe this to be a good decision. Investment should not be driven by advertisement but by facts. In my experience, any investment advertisement tying to appeal to mass audiences is fraud. This is no different for cryptocurrencies and reminds me of the penny stock scams.
- amelius 9y ago
  Can't most products be viewed as investments, from a house or car to a pair of shoes?
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    You buy into an investment because you expect a capital gain. You don't buy shoes in expectation of a capital gain.
    - neals 9y ago
      It's never that easy though: I can invest in a pair of shoes to get a job that makes me more money. It's a slippery slope and with the decentralization revolution that is happening, this will only keep on getting more blurry.
      - shaki-dora 9y ago
        You’re just redefining “investment” to be meaningless. There’s no slippery slope, unless your new shoes have leather soles.
      - MadSudaca 9y ago
        I agree with the other commenter. The same could be said about anything you buy for yourself. I buy food so that I can keep my body functioning, in order to be able to produce value and make money. So buying potatoes is a kind of investment.
        ada1981 9y ago
traviscj 9y ago
More discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582266, though it is interesting to hear it straight from the Google's mouth.
wastedhours 9y ago
Since Facebook banned them I've seen a surge in them on Twitter. Will be interesting to see what they do, and whether it contributes anything meaningful to their profit situation. I'm actually glad Google are (at least for the time being). Whilst rogue ICOs and crypto-pumpers are still working their stuff, the market is much more akin to back-street gambling and since there are already regs on AdWords for unsavoury ads, this fits the bill.
- ungzd 9y ago
  I see lots of ICO ads on Instagram, which uses Facebook's ad network. Probably they banned them only on Facebook, not in their ad network completely, or just lots of ads left unbanned. Also lots of russian money scam ads posted from temporary accounts, this may be explanation why ICOs aren't banned too: they ban, but new ads are posted again and again.
  - oculusthrift 9y ago
    i always see the scammiest ads on instagram (free yeezy'z)
campuscodi 9y ago
Good riddance! Source for statement: http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/02/coinhoarder.html http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/02/coinhoarder.html
John_KZ 9y ago
I hate scams myself, but what gives google the right to judge on this matter? Shouldn't they be following the guidelines of local governments?
- briandear 9y ago
  LOL. How? By geolocation? Geolocation is exceptionally annoying and inaccurate. I am near Marseille but geolocation has me in Corsica and sometimes Malta. With VPN, I can instantly be anywhere I want. Google.com should be google.com — everyone that visits should see the same thing regardless of location. If I visit a shop in downtown Mountain View, they don’t re-arrange the shop because I am resident of France do they? Then why the hell do websites do that? If I want the French location of the Google “shop,” I will visit the shop in France — google.fr. Of course, Google France would need to follow French law, but why Google Mountain View would need to — it makes no sense. The consumer is choosing to visit the website. The consumer should have the choice if they want to visit California or Lyon.
  - simias 9y ago
    They do all these things, I'm not sure what's your point. Of course google must abide by local jurisdiction if they want to make business here. Your search results and the ads your shown are tailored to your profile and your geolocation is part of your profile. It's completely irrelevant to the problem at hand however, it's their service and if they decide they don't want to advertise strawberry yogurt or brands containing the letter 'w' anymore then they can.
- AJ007 9y ago
  If someone loses all of their savings after clicking an ad served by Google, that isn’t very good for Google’s brand or the user’s ability to buy anything else.
- yani 9y ago
  They are a service provider and can decide what to allow and disallow on their platform.
robotbikes 9y ago
I was listening to terrestrial radio the other day and was surprised to hear a radio advertisement beckoning retirees to cash in their 401ks to join the cryptocurrency future of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The bubble is too big for Google to slow it down and it has grown beyond the realm of tech savvy geeks into something fueled by hype and hubris.
- riffraff 9y ago
  in Italy, which is not the heart of tech bubbles, there have been reports (I got a call too!) of telemarketers cold calling people to invest in cryptocurrencies. This genuinely frightened me.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    I received one such call (in Italy)...
  - notahacker 9y ago
    I've received a couple in the UK. Low end telemarketers (overseas, poor English, zero knowledge of their subject matter) and clearly originating from random dialling or a list of mobile numbers without names, so making traditional boiler room operations seem sophisticated.
    - drusepth 9y ago
      I wonder at what point it becomes profitable to hire telemarketers to drive interest in a cryptocurrency you've bought into so you can pump and dump, especially if these telemarketers are coming from overseas where they're notoriously cheap.
      - s73v3r_ 9y ago
        Watch the John Oliver segment on cryptocurrencies from this weekend. They have a promo video from a company that is literally advertising pump and dump schemes.
  - 9y ago
narrator 9y ago
Now all the alt-right and conspiracy bloggers who got kicked off of adwords will have something to advertise.
edent 9y ago
Good. I accidentally turned off my ad-blocker a few days ago. Almost all the ads I saw were variants on "Be paid for using your phone - download our app to mine crypto!" I've worked in ad-tech. Part of the problem is the scale is too large for advertising networks to check all the adverts. If you run a newspaper, you get to see and approve the ads before running with them. Online, at best, an advertising network might see the initial ad & landing page, but then it is rapidly changed once live.
- giarc 9y ago
  After Facebook announced it would stop crypto adverts I continued to see them for quite a while. Facebook detects text in ads and will alert you when there is too much. I imagine it also reads that text and therefore would be quite easy to auto flag ads with "ICO" "Crypto" "Coin" in them.
taneq 9y ago
1. Sell all your bitcoins. 2. Ban advertising on (one of?) the largest online advertising platform(s). 3. Wait for bitcoin to crash. 4. Buy bitcoins again. 5. Profit!
- orthecreedence 9y ago
  > Wait for bitcoin to crash. Don't need to do any manipulation at all for that to happen.
bitwize 9y ago
Now if only they would ban the 50-second, unskippable, "legal steroid" ads that are popping onto YouTube...
wslh 9y ago
Does this include software services related to cryptoasseta?
- dgut 9y ago
  As somebody in the process of building a "cryptoasseta" app - I wonder that too.
BenGosub 9y ago
Why only mention cryptocurrencies in the title? There are other financial products listed...
- aje403 9y ago
  "Advertisers offering Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting will be required to be certified by Google before they can advertise through AdWords. Certification is only available in certain countries." This isn't rocket science: "Hey, we shouldn't be supporting cryptocurrency advertisement any more, this could lead to trouble for us in the upcoming year and may be unethical" "Why don't we take a look at all risky financial products that aren't easily understood but are marketed at layman investors" "Great idea!" "Definitely let's leave binary options out with cryptocurrencies, but we'll just leave in stricter controls for financial products which aren't complete scams"
  - ellisv 9y ago
    Sounds like the opposite way FB handled Russian paid political ads for the US election.
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  Contract For Difference is being used to sell cryptocurrency exposure by some companies. I wouldn’t be surprised if CFD is marketed in other areas too.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Because HN has a boner for crypto.
purple-again 9y ago
Wow thanks for that, this chick seems awesome. Maybe my reading comprehension is shit but I never saw where she linked to her 'centralized feelings on bitcoin' or whatever. Did anyone see where that is? I've been sitting here in my little traditional finance world shaking my head at Bitcoin for years and would love to see her much more elegantly written tear down.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chx 9y ago
  > this chick I can't, just can't, not in 2018, leave "this chick" without a remark: it sounds rather derogatory. Please be more respectful.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - phatfish 9y ago
    Its not derogatory, stop stirring.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - purple-again 9y ago
    I apologize if the word offends you. It was both intentioned to be non offensive (which should be apparent from my admiration for her WORK while giving no fucks about her as a person) and carries a common definition in the English space of being polite and non derogatory. Had she been male my comment would be exactly the same except it would say 'dude' in place of 'chick'. Now does anyone know where I can find that write up, because I'm still really interested?
    - 9y ago
mic47 9y ago
Well, that explain the bunny token ad I was seeing 1 hour ago :-) On serious note, it will take some time to implement. I am actually glad they did it. This should make it harder for ponzi-like schemes to get traction, so hopefully, it will make price less volatile.
deleted 9y ago
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tbunt 9y ago
Disgraceful that Google would do this on the day of Hawkins' tragic passing. Big Steve was a true believer and my contacts told me he was preparing his own ICO for late 2018, I'm glad he's not able to see this. Why hasn't Elon Musk made a new Google yet? A search engine that would benefit humanity and encourage free expression of ideas instead of hiding knowledge away.
- distances 9y ago
  I assume this one was sarcasm? It's sometimes really hard to say in this topic. Just checking some of the other comments show some quite out-there opinions made apparently with full seriousness.
Legogris 9y ago
> Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice) The question here is where they draw the line. What about tools, software and services around the ecosystem but not promoting any particular cryptocurrency or related to trading? I can see how it makes sense for them to block wallet ads for now seeing just how many forked scamwallets buy ads for e.g. MyEtherWallet to trick users into giving them their keys. However, there are a growing number of companies offering services and products for the business sector that could get seriously affected by this. As an example, it's clear that they won't ban HyperLedger consultants (HyperLedger is a blockchain platform without a cryptocurrency), but how about Ethereum consultants? How about SDK vendors?
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Because people here are uninformed and the ad ban was on phishing ads not ico related stuff.
m3kw9 9y ago
Probably they found 90% of the ads are frauds or just plain fraud like in their proposed amount you will gain from buying the said cryptos. Bitcoin would not need advertisement for example.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Nah it was more targeted at phishing scams.
growthkarl 9y ago
About time they did this! Facebook did as well but they’re still popping up every now and then (non retargeting). Hopefully Google will enforce it better.
saikiranmc 9y ago
Thank god oh no, actually thanks to Google. I don't have to see stupid Youtube cryptocurrency video ads which are mostly FAKE and a waste of time.
stevespang 9y ago
Google is a deep pocket and the SEC recently put everyone on notice that crypto is under their jurisdiction and must adhere to current laws and rules, therefore ALL PARTIES involved in offerings or "portrayals" have culpability when the hammer drops.
stevespang 9y ago
Googles lawyers, go figure.
blondie9x 9y ago
About time. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Another talking parrot head.
samstave 9y ago
ELI5: why does the world need a larger number of cryptocurrencies vs fewer/one instead? (I’m not holding any position, I just want to understand the logic for either case)
- jellicle 9y ago
  If there's only one, and it's not run by you, how can you scam people with it? Get with the program!
- tyrust 9y ago
  Many coins are iterating on the technology introduced by Bitcoin. Some of the coins are tokens that can be used in exchange for something (e.g. siacoin in exchange for decentralized storage).
- coatmatter 9y ago
  Going off-topic, but I want to ask whether writing "ELI5" is really necessary? I find it too much of a redditism and while it doesn't seem to contravene any hn guidelines, I get the feeling that "simple" questions would garner a better audience without the ELI5 prefix. There's perhaps also the problem of it being an unnecessary abbreviation, specific to another community. Alternatives (even though it takes more keystrokes) could be along the lines of "pardon my ignorance", "I'm new to this" or even simply "can someone explain". I bet these would receive just as good (if not better) responses. Anyone agree or disagree?
  - samstave 9y ago
    Ill accept your constructive criticism.
  - asdsa5325 9y ago
    I think you are overthinking it entirely
    - coatmatter 9y ago
      That could well be true, so I thought I'd throw it out there to check if I was (comparatively) the only one who isn't really a fan of "ELI5". So the other alternative is to have more ELI5 prefixes for questions. It's something I never question on reddit since that's where it has orginated and flourished, but since this is hacker news I figured it'd be safer to overthink than underthink.
api 9y ago
I'm really interested in cryptocurrencies and excited about their future, but I'm disgusted by their use as a platform for scams. I'm afraid that I support this, and I really wish people in the cryptocurrency community would do more to educate people about scams. Of course I suppose it's futile. Once this kind of mania takes off it takes on a life of its own.
- ryeguy_24 9y ago
  I think scammers are drawn to irreversibility of transactions (at least for the cryptocurrencies that I know). Can't call your credit card company and cancel the transaction.
- loceng 9y ago
  Are you interested in crypto-assets if they're not structured like a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme, where wealth is redistributed weighted towards the earlier adopters - or are you excited about the potential of blockchains? We already have currencies that worldwide could be transferred to a blockchain crypto-asset structure via governments destroying money ('take out' of traditional circulation) to put onto an immutable digital blockchain ledger, as opposed to someone receiving currency of choice in exchange (E.g. I give you this digital thing you call a 'coin', and you give me $1 USD). If the main value is truly in the decentralized and immutable ledger aspects, then its use can eventually be State/government-mandated, instead of gaining collaboration through unreasonably incentivizing its adoption, no?
krrrh 9y ago
Finally James Altucher can go back to doing what he does best.
- chabes 9y ago
  Underrated comment.
beiller 9y ago
Google also shut down my google cloud Compute Engine server without notice, as I tried to run a mining pool. "Mining" is against their TOS (wasn't mining). Wonderful future. Moving to Amazon works fine for now...
- urda 9y ago
  Was it a free account, I'm betting it was a free account because: > Customer may not use the Services to engage in mining cryptocurrency;
  - beiller 9y ago
    No it wasn't. I was paying for a large VM $200 / month. Also I'm paying for their managed Postgres.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  You were running a mining pool, but somehow not mining? The dissonance astounds.
  - beiller 9y ago
    There is a lot of snark in these comments. No, mining pools do not mine. They host HTTP website where users sign up, and a "stratum" server, where miners connect, and submit their "work". No mining (as in no CPU usage for hashing).
DimitarIbra9 9y ago
google has right to do this but I do think this is a bad move. Filtering and censoring is opposite to what google claimed what they were doing.
an4rchy 9y ago
I wonder how much of current ad revenue (Google/FB) is coming from cryptocurrency related companies and how this might negatively impact their earnings. However, it may be a small amount or they both factored this change into their forecasting before announcements.
- ggggtez 9y ago
  Advertizing scams may give short term profit, but could also lead to long term losses as websites choose to move to a different, less scammy platform. This is probably a case where the short term financials is the exact wrong way to think about the problem.
- Jesus_Jones 9y ago
  google is way too big for this to matter.
  - an4rchy 9y ago
    After reading about the timeframe, I now think this might be a reason they are blocking ads starting in June, if something is bad, why not stop now, instead of at the start of a new quarter. (when these ads may have likely scammed people for a few more months)
martin1975 9y ago
I guess this means no XRP/Ripple ads, a company Google has heavily invested in?
andrebu 9y ago
Google doesn't even allow ads for legal, medical cannabis or headshops.
- mthoms 9y ago
  Nor tobacco, firearms or alcohol as I understand it.
whataretensors 9y ago
We've created a generation of people who will do anything they are told to do. Now these big corps and governments feel like they have to baby-proof the world because we've created a bunch of lemmings who will give all their money to an ICO because a banner told them to.
- ggggtez 9y ago
  "You are the 1 millionth visitor! Click here to claim your prize!" Please. People have always been gullible, it's just that the scams have moved to more lucrative enterprises.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- wslh 9y ago
  > we've created a bunch of lemmings who will give all their money to an ICO because a banner told them to. It is a problem of basic finance education which should be part of the school curriculum. People also buy a lot of stuff they don't need or include false claims because a banner told them to.
  - jrwiegand 9y ago
    I was just saying this the other day. I have been a steep learning curve about retirement accounts, mortgages, etc. There should really be a financial curriculum in high school, possibly all four years. This is basic information that everyone should be aware of.
    - oculusthrift 9y ago
      isn't there some personal responsibility to teach yourself these things and not be stupid? Why do government funded schools have to teach people everything? And what subject will we cut to teach these things?
iamandrebulatov 9y ago
Google doesn't allow ads for legal medical cannabis or headshops.
a3n 9y ago
(cynicism) Can we now assume that Google will be getting into cryptocurrencies in some way in the medium future?(/cynicism)
rdlecler1 9y ago
I find it interesting that this seems to be negatively affecting the blue chip coins. One might think that less competition would drive investors to them, not away.
- orthecreedence 9y ago
  It's almost as if the cryptocurrency markets are completely irrational and have magnitudes less value in them than their market caps claim to, and on top of this are pumped up even further by scammers printing fake money (Tether) to bolster the prices. Almost... That said, I don't think the price dives have anything at all to do with advertising, and more to do with the fact that the bubble is slowly deflating.
halamadrid 9y ago
Finally, some sense of responsibility kicks in. Another platform is LinkedIn, where I have been getting a ton of invites from "Blockchain Experts", "ICO Experts" whom I have never heard of. Some of my connections are connected to them but I think that's more of a blind "Accept". If you connect, I've noticed they immediately start promoting coins or ICO. Massive scam going on here. Hope LinkedIn bans these fake promotions too.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  Hard to know if they're even real people or just bot-driven accounts.
hkmurakami 9y ago
I remember being appalled that Japanese subway cars had FX trading ads targeted towards retail "investors" as a fun and easy to make some money. I hope that this hasn't proliferated to cryptocurrencies as well.
nym 9y ago
Facebook: Hey everyone! No more cryptocurrency ads. Google: We're banning them too. Big Pharma: But not us right? Google: No, we appreciate your business... Facebook: How much are you looking to spend??
- jhwang5 9y ago
  Dumb comparison. At least medicine heals people.
marcrosoft 9y ago
I support the ability for Google to make this decision but we should not be celebrating this as a good thing. Instead, it should strike fear. Google has a disproportionate amount of influence through its ads and cannot act in the best interest of all individuals.
- gowld 9y ago
  The harms deriving from the possibility of doing bad must be balanced against the harms deriving from unwillingness to do good. Allowing toxic ads should strike fear as well, that browsing online is an unsafe "back alley" full of scams.
pmarreck 9y ago
ICO = IPO without all those pesky regulations and gated access. Which is both good and bad, of course.
- orthecreedence 9y ago
  No, it's just bad. It's the stupidest thing ever. ICOs are so incredibly stupid that it's mind boggling. "Hey, give us $50,000 and we'll give you a token that will hopefully be worth 10x once we dupe a bunch of other suckers like you! If you're really, really lucky we'll build something marginally useful and might even use that token you bought to power it! Now you can use your $50,000 in tokens to power a decentralized photo sharing app that you could have gotten for free by just using google drive! Woww!"
mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
As always the typical hn reader is completely oblivious to the actual reasons why Google banned crypto related ads. For those who don't know, phishing has been plaguing Google ads and that is likely their primary reason for doing away with crypto ads, NOT because it has anything to do with ICOs. But why bother preaching it to the wrong choir... You guys know everything here.
intrasight 9y ago
I thought it was a fad that had already passed. I'm sort of surprised to see this level of discussion about cryptocurrency.
wslh 9y ago
It is interesting to note that OTOY will launch RNDR (Render Token) [1] in Ethereum and their advisory board includes Eric Schmidt from Google [2]. [1] https://rendertoken.com/ https://rendertoken.com/ [2] https://home.otoy.com/advisory-board/ https://home.otoy.com/advisory-board/
mancerayder 9y ago
Did Google ban all scam ads out there? Is predatory lending banned? How about magical thinking supplements, systems, and other scams? Also, wallets? What did the crypto wallet makers do wrong? This, my friends, is monopoly capitalism at its finest; when corporate interests are threatened they come down on information exchange, which means they can disappear products. And since it's privately owned and not state owned, everyone's okay with it morally. Because cryptocurrency is naughty. Let's ban drug discussion, too, it's naughty. How about hate speech, let's disappear search results for that. Who needs Big Brother when a massive surveillance apparatus that, quite frankly, is a headache to avoid (although I use duckduckgo and Firefox for all non tech stuff) can also disappear ideas and products without a popular vote or accountability? One plus of all this is I won't have to see the Crypto Genius Reveals Next Bitcoin ad with the pic of the guy staring off in the distance in crooked glasses. Always hated that one.
- warent 9y ago
  Are you proposing that an ad for a placebo is as damaging as an ad encouraging people to gamble their life savings (bonus: on what may be nothing more than a pump and dump scheme)? As an aside, I'm not sure what drug discussion or hate speech has to do with this at all.
  - mancerayder 9y ago
    You've missed the point and are throwing a false equivalence argument at me. It's not about what's bad or not bad, it's about a non-elected, unaccountable corporation deciding what (non-illegal) content to make vanish. Just because you think all cryptocurrency is a scam doesn't mean it is. My drug discussion example is another example of protecting people from themselves (in the same way you want to protect them from the cryptocurrency world because your personal feelings have directed you towards the word 'damaging').
  - mancerayder 9y ago
    Peter Hetherington, chief executive of IG Group, Europe’s largest retail trading website, said consumers would be “more likely to end up with reputable brokers and proper regulatory protection” following the changes. But he warned that there were wider implications for financial services, saying: “Big American tech companies are increasingly influential in deciding how financial services products are marketed. This is fine if they get to the right answer . . . but a worrying precedent if they do not, since the normal checks and balances do not apply to their decisions.” ("Google to ban cryptocurrency adverts", Financial Times, March 15, 2018)
wxyyxc1992 9y ago
The bubble is too big, dont be evil
dorianm 9y ago
Does it mean I can't advertise the points project on Google? https://pointsproject.org https://pointsproject.org
arisAlexis 9y ago
google lost the blockchain race..

686 points by em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

Good. The amount of crazy ICO's I've seen is staggering. Most of them are surely scams in some sense. Reddit is filled with them.

saintPirelli 9y ago
I'd actually go as far as to say that ICOs are fraudulent by nature. The ones that are not fraudulent by intent just have no idea what they are actually doing.
- filesystem 9y ago
  They know exactly what they are doing. They are raising massive funds in an extremely short period of time with no direct obligation to provide returns to shareholders.
  - saintPirelli 9y ago
    I like to think that some of them at least try to advertise them fairly (as some kind of crypto-kickstarter campaign), but I agree that any company that raises millions in a few days or mere hours without owing anybody anything in return is bound to fail due to a massive lack of incentive to produce.
  - Barrin92 9y ago
    >They know exactly what they are doing Yep, it's deliberate. They're the backalley version of a regular stock offering. They're marketing themselves as "opening investments up to the people" but they're simply a way to get money from investors without any of the very reasonable legal securities and obligations that come with a company going public.
aws_ls 9y ago
Mixed feelings on this one. Most of them are likely to be scams as its so easy to do. But there are also things like the Brave browser[1] with its BAT(Basic Attention Token)[2], which am very excited about. With the Ad revenue on Internet falling all around, with Ad-blockers increasing. Brave, with BAT, provides a new way for publishers to get paid. Interestingly it also has the potential to disrupt Google's Adsense model. So there is an interesting element of incumbent (Google) and disruptor (brave) in there. [1] https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ [2] https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#meaning https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#meaning edit: typo
- Taek 9y ago
  The vast majority of cryptocurrency advertising is aimed directly at taking advantage of investors who probably don't know how to do proper diligence on such an early and untested technology. I would put this squarely in the same vein as ads that might encourage you to 'buy our gemstone, it's going to be the new diamond'. Or 'our baseball cards are first edition and guaranteed to go up in value', etc.
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    I always thought the "guaranteed to go up in value" claim was silly. If it's guaranteed to go up in value, why would they want to sell it to me?
    - Taek 9y ago
      Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. If you have idle capital and I have something valuable, I can cash in sooner and you can get a valuable resource. So there is a legitimate reason for me to sell you something that is guaranteed to go up in value assuming that I want money now more than you do. That's not an endorsement of any asset in the crypto space, and I would never remotely suggest that any token today is guaranteed to go up in value.
      - Sangermaine 9y ago
iamben 9y ago
What I think is most bizarre - I have friends with really decent businesses that try really, really hard to get a few hundred thousand in funding. And yet I see the most _terrible_ ideas with an ICO cap of 20 million dollars. Still people throw in the cash. Ideas with literally no need for a blockchain. But "everyone will be able to spend the token on [insert terrible idea]!" 'The most bespoke electric hypercar! With blockchain!' http://www.arrinera.io/ http://www.arrinera.io/ - I mean really?! I heard someone talking about "LGBT on the blockchain" the other day - "We'll aim for a conservative $40million ICO." Ridiculous.
- Aunche 9y ago
  How much money is actually raised during ICOs? Market cap is based on marginal pricing, so it's completely meaningless in a cryptocurrency.
  - brightball 9y ago
    I always wonder who actually validates the money when somebody says they raised $20 mil in a private ICO. What keeps people from just claiming that to make other investors more willing and give an appearance of legitimacy?
- nkrisc 9y ago
  People aren't buying those coins because they think there's a good idea there. They're buying them because they think they'll get rich quick and be able to cash out.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  > decent businesses that try really, really hard to get a few hundred thousand in funding At a certain point I have to wonder if this is working along the lines of a lemon market. Coin investors don't know for certain whether they're being scammed, so they want an offer that will have positive expectation even after adjusting for scam risk. But founders do know, somewhat, the value of their ideas - and honest players are bounded by what they can actually return, while the deluded or dishonest can promise the moon. Eventually it only becomes possible to get investments by lying to people. There are forces that should act as a brake here, of course; a sober idea asking for $200k ought to have lower risk than a stupid idea asking for $20M. But for some reason, that sort of risk discrimination isn't really happening at the moment. Maybe investors are over-eager, maybe the scam rate is so high at all price points to bury useful information, but it certainly looks like bad ideas are actually doing better.

_aeneas 9y ago

I believe this to be a good decision. Investment should not be driven by advertisement but by facts. In my experience, any investment advertisement tying to appeal to mass audiences is fraud. This is no different for cryptocurrencies and reminds me of the penny stock scams.

amelius 9y ago
Can't most products be viewed as investments, from a house or car to a pair of shoes?
- blattimwind 9y ago
  You buy into an investment because you expect a capital gain. You don't buy shoes in expectation of a capital gain.
  - neals 9y ago
    It's never that easy though: I can invest in a pair of shoes to get a job that makes me more money. It's a slippery slope and with the decentralization revolution that is happening, this will only keep on getting more blurry.
    - shaki-dora 9y ago
      You’re just redefining “investment” to be meaningless. There’s no slippery slope, unless your new shoes have leather soles.
    - MadSudaca 9y ago
      I agree with the other commenter. The same could be said about anything you buy for yourself. I buy food so that I can keep my body functioning, in order to be able to produce value and make money. So buying potatoes is a kind of investment.
      - ada1981 9y ago

traviscj 9y ago

More discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582266, though it is interesting to hear it straight from the Google's mouth.

wastedhours 9y ago

Since Facebook banned them I've seen a surge in them on Twitter. Will be interesting to see what they do, and whether it contributes anything meaningful to their profit situation. I'm actually glad Google are (at least for the time being). Whilst rogue ICOs and crypto-pumpers are still working their stuff, the market is much more akin to back-street gambling and since there are already regs on AdWords for unsavoury ads, this fits the bill.

ungzd 9y ago
I see lots of ICO ads on Instagram, which uses Facebook's ad network. Probably they banned them only on Facebook, not in their ad network completely, or just lots of ads left unbanned. Also lots of russian money scam ads posted from temporary accounts, this may be explanation why ICOs aren't banned too: they ban, but new ads are posted again and again.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  i always see the scammiest ads on instagram (free yeezy'z)

campuscodi 9y ago

Good riddance! Source for statement: http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/02/coinhoarder.html http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/02/coinhoarder.html

John_KZ 9y ago

I hate scams myself, but what gives google the right to judge on this matter? Shouldn't they be following the guidelines of local governments?

briandear 9y ago
LOL. How? By geolocation? Geolocation is exceptionally annoying and inaccurate. I am near Marseille but geolocation has me in Corsica and sometimes Malta. With VPN, I can instantly be anywhere I want. Google.com should be google.com — everyone that visits should see the same thing regardless of location. If I visit a shop in downtown Mountain View, they don’t re-arrange the shop because I am resident of France do they? Then why the hell do websites do that? If I want the French location of the Google “shop,” I will visit the shop in France — google.fr. Of course, Google France would need to follow French law, but why Google Mountain View would need to — it makes no sense. The consumer is choosing to visit the website. The consumer should have the choice if they want to visit California or Lyon.
- simias 9y ago
  They do all these things, I'm not sure what's your point. Of course google must abide by local jurisdiction if they want to make business here. Your search results and the ads your shown are tailored to your profile and your geolocation is part of your profile. It's completely irrelevant to the problem at hand however, it's their service and if they decide they don't want to advertise strawberry yogurt or brands containing the letter 'w' anymore then they can.
AJ007 9y ago
If someone loses all of their savings after clicking an ad served by Google, that isn’t very good for Google’s brand or the user’s ability to buy anything else.
yani 9y ago
They are a service provider and can decide what to allow and disallow on their platform.

robotbikes 9y ago

I was listening to terrestrial radio the other day and was surprised to hear a radio advertisement beckoning retirees to cash in their 401ks to join the cryptocurrency future of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The bubble is too big for Google to slow it down and it has grown beyond the realm of tech savvy geeks into something fueled by hype and hubris.

riffraff 9y ago
in Italy, which is not the heart of tech bubbles, there have been reports (I got a call too!) of telemarketers cold calling people to invest in cryptocurrencies. This genuinely frightened me.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  I received one such call (in Italy)...
- notahacker 9y ago
  I've received a couple in the UK. Low end telemarketers (overseas, poor English, zero knowledge of their subject matter) and clearly originating from random dialling or a list of mobile numbers without names, so making traditional boiler room operations seem sophisticated.
  - drusepth 9y ago
    I wonder at what point it becomes profitable to hire telemarketers to drive interest in a cryptocurrency you've bought into so you can pump and dump, especially if these telemarketers are coming from overseas where they're notoriously cheap.
    - s73v3r_ 9y ago
      Watch the John Oliver segment on cryptocurrencies from this weekend. They have a promo video from a company that is literally advertising pump and dump schemes.
- 9y ago

narrator 9y ago

Now all the alt-right and conspiracy bloggers who got kicked off of adwords will have something to advertise.

edent 9y ago

Good. I accidentally turned off my ad-blocker a few days ago. Almost all the ads I saw were variants on "Be paid for using your phone - download our app to mine crypto!" I've worked in ad-tech. Part of the problem is the scale is too large for advertising networks to check all the adverts. If you run a newspaper, you get to see and approve the ads before running with them. Online, at best, an advertising network might see the initial ad & landing page, but then it is rapidly changed once live.

giarc 9y ago
After Facebook announced it would stop crypto adverts I continued to see them for quite a while. Facebook detects text in ads and will alert you when there is too much. I imagine it also reads that text and therefore would be quite easy to auto flag ads with "ICO" "Crypto" "Coin" in them.

taneq 9y ago

1. Sell all your bitcoins. 2. Ban advertising on (one of?) the largest online advertising platform(s). 3. Wait for bitcoin to crash. 4. Buy bitcoins again. 5. Profit!

orthecreedence 9y ago
> Wait for bitcoin to crash. Don't need to do any manipulation at all for that to happen.

bitwize 9y ago

Now if only they would ban the 50-second, unskippable, "legal steroid" ads that are popping onto YouTube...

wslh 9y ago

Does this include software services related to cryptoasseta?

dgut 9y ago
As somebody in the process of building a "cryptoasseta" app - I wonder that too.

BenGosub 9y ago

Why only mention cryptocurrencies in the title? There are other financial products listed...

aje403 9y ago
"Advertisers offering Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting will be required to be certified by Google before they can advertise through AdWords. Certification is only available in certain countries." This isn't rocket science: "Hey, we shouldn't be supporting cryptocurrency advertisement any more, this could lead to trouble for us in the upcoming year and may be unethical" "Why don't we take a look at all risky financial products that aren't easily understood but are marketed at layman investors" "Great idea!" "Definitely let's leave binary options out with cryptocurrencies, but we'll just leave in stricter controls for financial products which aren't complete scams"
- ellisv 9y ago
  Sounds like the opposite way FB handled Russian paid political ads for the US election.
DINKDINK 9y ago
Contract For Difference is being used to sell cryptocurrency exposure by some companies. I wouldn’t be surprised if CFD is marketed in other areas too.
mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Because HN has a boner for crypto.

purple-again 9y ago

Wow thanks for that, this chick seems awesome. Maybe my reading comprehension is shit but I never saw where she linked to her 'centralized feelings on bitcoin' or whatever. Did anyone see where that is? I've been sitting here in my little traditional finance world shaking my head at Bitcoin for years and would love to see her much more elegantly written tear down.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chx 9y ago
> this chick I can't, just can't, not in 2018, leave "this chick" without a remark: it sounds rather derogatory. Please be more respectful.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- phatfish 9y ago
  Its not derogatory, stop stirring.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- purple-again 9y ago
  I apologize if the word offends you. It was both intentioned to be non offensive (which should be apparent from my admiration for her WORK while giving no fucks about her as a person) and carries a common definition in the English space of being polite and non derogatory. Had she been male my comment would be exactly the same except it would say 'dude' in place of 'chick'. Now does anyone know where I can find that write up, because I'm still really interested?
  - 9y ago

mic47 9y ago

Well, that explain the bunny token ad I was seeing 1 hour ago :-) On serious note, it will take some time to implement. I am actually glad they did it. This should make it harder for ponzi-like schemes to get traction, so hopefully, it will make price less volatile.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tbunt 9y ago

Disgraceful that Google would do this on the day of Hawkins' tragic passing. Big Steve was a true believer and my contacts told me he was preparing his own ICO for late 2018, I'm glad he's not able to see this. Why hasn't Elon Musk made a new Google yet? A search engine that would benefit humanity and encourage free expression of ideas instead of hiding knowledge away.

distances 9y ago
I assume this one was sarcasm? It's sometimes really hard to say in this topic. Just checking some of the other comments show some quite out-there opinions made apparently with full seriousness.

Legogris 9y ago

> Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice) The question here is where they draw the line. What about tools, software and services around the ecosystem but not promoting any particular cryptocurrency or related to trading? I can see how it makes sense for them to block wallet ads for now seeing just how many forked scamwallets buy ads for e.g. MyEtherWallet to trick users into giving them their keys. However, there are a growing number of companies offering services and products for the business sector that could get seriously affected by this. As an example, it's clear that they won't ban HyperLedger consultants (HyperLedger is a blockchain platform without a cryptocurrency), but how about Ethereum consultants? How about SDK vendors?

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Because people here are uninformed and the ad ban was on phishing ads not ico related stuff.

m3kw9 9y ago

Probably they found 90% of the ads are frauds or just plain fraud like in their proposed amount you will gain from buying the said cryptos. Bitcoin would not need advertisement for example.

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Nah it was more targeted at phishing scams.

growthkarl 9y ago

About time they did this! Facebook did as well but they’re still popping up every now and then (non retargeting). Hopefully Google will enforce it better.

saikiranmc 9y ago

Thank god oh no, actually thanks to Google. I don't have to see stupid Youtube cryptocurrency video ads which are mostly FAKE and a waste of time.

stevespang 9y ago

Google is a deep pocket and the SEC recently put everyone on notice that crypto is under their jurisdiction and must adhere to current laws and rules, therefore ALL PARTIES involved in offerings or "portrayals" have culpability when the hammer drops.

stevespang 9y ago

Googles lawyers, go figure.

blondie9x 9y ago

About time. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Another talking parrot head.

samstave 9y ago

ELI5: why does the world need a larger number of cryptocurrencies vs fewer/one instead? (I’m not holding any position, I just want to understand the logic for either case)

jellicle 9y ago
If there's only one, and it's not run by you, how can you scam people with it? Get with the program!
tyrust 9y ago
Many coins are iterating on the technology introduced by Bitcoin. Some of the coins are tokens that can be used in exchange for something (e.g. siacoin in exchange for decentralized storage).
coatmatter 9y ago
Going off-topic, but I want to ask whether writing "ELI5" is really necessary? I find it too much of a redditism and while it doesn't seem to contravene any hn guidelines, I get the feeling that "simple" questions would garner a better audience without the ELI5 prefix. There's perhaps also the problem of it being an unnecessary abbreviation, specific to another community. Alternatives (even though it takes more keystrokes) could be along the lines of "pardon my ignorance", "I'm new to this" or even simply "can someone explain". I bet these would receive just as good (if not better) responses. Anyone agree or disagree?
- samstave 9y ago
  Ill accept your constructive criticism.
- asdsa5325 9y ago
  I think you are overthinking it entirely
  - coatmatter 9y ago
    That could well be true, so I thought I'd throw it out there to check if I was (comparatively) the only one who isn't really a fan of "ELI5". So the other alternative is to have more ELI5 prefixes for questions. It's something I never question on reddit since that's where it has orginated and flourished, but since this is hacker news I figured it'd be safer to overthink than underthink.

api 9y ago

I'm really interested in cryptocurrencies and excited about their future, but I'm disgusted by their use as a platform for scams. I'm afraid that I support this, and I really wish people in the cryptocurrency community would do more to educate people about scams. Of course I suppose it's futile. Once this kind of mania takes off it takes on a life of its own.

ryeguy_24 9y ago
I think scammers are drawn to irreversibility of transactions (at least for the cryptocurrencies that I know). Can't call your credit card company and cancel the transaction.
loceng 9y ago
Are you interested in crypto-assets if they're not structured like a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme, where wealth is redistributed weighted towards the earlier adopters - or are you excited about the potential of blockchains? We already have currencies that worldwide could be transferred to a blockchain crypto-asset structure via governments destroying money ('take out' of traditional circulation) to put onto an immutable digital blockchain ledger, as opposed to someone receiving currency of choice in exchange (E.g. I give you this digital thing you call a 'coin', and you give me $1 USD). If the main value is truly in the decentralized and immutable ledger aspects, then its use can eventually be State/government-mandated, instead of gaining collaboration through unreasonably incentivizing its adoption, no?

krrrh 9y ago

Finally James Altucher can go back to doing what he does best.

chabes 9y ago
Underrated comment.

beiller 9y ago

Google also shut down my google cloud Compute Engine server without notice, as I tried to run a mining pool. "Mining" is against their TOS (wasn't mining). Wonderful future. Moving to Amazon works fine for now...

urda 9y ago
Was it a free account, I'm betting it was a free account because: > Customer may not use the Services to engage in mining cryptocurrency;
- beiller 9y ago
  No it wasn't. I was paying for a large VM $200 / month. Also I'm paying for their managed Postgres.
freeone3000 9y ago
You were running a mining pool, but somehow not mining? The dissonance astounds.
- beiller 9y ago
  There is a lot of snark in these comments. No, mining pools do not mine. They host HTTP website where users sign up, and a "stratum" server, where miners connect, and submit their "work". No mining (as in no CPU usage for hashing).

DimitarIbra9 9y ago

google has right to do this but I do think this is a bad move. Filtering and censoring is opposite to what google claimed what they were doing.

an4rchy 9y ago

I wonder how much of current ad revenue (Google/FB) is coming from cryptocurrency related companies and how this might negatively impact their earnings. However, it may be a small amount or they both factored this change into their forecasting before announcements.

ggggtez 9y ago
Advertizing scams may give short term profit, but could also lead to long term losses as websites choose to move to a different, less scammy platform. This is probably a case where the short term financials is the exact wrong way to think about the problem.
Jesus_Jones 9y ago
google is way too big for this to matter.
- an4rchy 9y ago
  After reading about the timeframe, I now think this might be a reason they are blocking ads starting in June, if something is bad, why not stop now, instead of at the start of a new quarter. (when these ads may have likely scammed people for a few more months)

martin1975 9y ago

I guess this means no XRP/Ripple ads, a company Google has heavily invested in?

andrebu 9y ago

Google doesn't even allow ads for legal, medical cannabis or headshops.

mthoms 9y ago
Nor tobacco, firearms or alcohol as I understand it.

whataretensors 9y ago

We've created a generation of people who will do anything they are told to do. Now these big corps and governments feel like they have to baby-proof the world because we've created a bunch of lemmings who will give all their money to an ICO because a banner told them to.

ggggtez 9y ago
"You are the 1 millionth visitor! Click here to claim your prize!" Please. People have always been gullible, it's just that the scams have moved to more lucrative enterprises.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
wslh 9y ago
> we've created a bunch of lemmings who will give all their money to an ICO because a banner told them to. It is a problem of basic finance education which should be part of the school curriculum. People also buy a lot of stuff they don't need or include false claims because a banner told them to.
- jrwiegand 9y ago
  I was just saying this the other day. I have been a steep learning curve about retirement accounts, mortgages, etc. There should really be a financial curriculum in high school, possibly all four years. This is basic information that everyone should be aware of.
  - oculusthrift 9y ago
    isn't there some personal responsibility to teach yourself these things and not be stupid? Why do government funded schools have to teach people everything? And what subject will we cut to teach these things?

iamandrebulatov 9y ago

Google doesn't allow ads for legal medical cannabis or headshops.

a3n 9y ago

(cynicism) Can we now assume that Google will be getting into cryptocurrencies in some way in the medium future?(/cynicism)

rdlecler1 9y ago

I find it interesting that this seems to be negatively affecting the blue chip coins. One might think that less competition would drive investors to them, not away.

orthecreedence 9y ago
It's almost as if the cryptocurrency markets are completely irrational and have magnitudes less value in them than their market caps claim to, and on top of this are pumped up even further by scammers printing fake money (Tether) to bolster the prices. Almost... That said, I don't think the price dives have anything at all to do with advertising, and more to do with the fact that the bubble is slowly deflating.

halamadrid 9y ago

Finally, some sense of responsibility kicks in. Another platform is LinkedIn, where I have been getting a ton of invites from "Blockchain Experts", "ICO Experts" whom I have never heard of. Some of my connections are connected to them but I think that's more of a blind "Accept". If you connect, I've noticed they immediately start promoting coins or ICO. Massive scam going on here. Hope LinkedIn bans these fake promotions too.

nkrisc 9y ago
Hard to know if they're even real people or just bot-driven accounts.

hkmurakami 9y ago

I remember being appalled that Japanese subway cars had FX trading ads targeted towards retail "investors" as a fun and easy to make some money. I hope that this hasn't proliferated to cryptocurrencies as well.

nym 9y ago

Facebook: Hey everyone! No more cryptocurrency ads. Google: We're banning them too. Big Pharma: But not us right? Google: No, we appreciate your business... Facebook: How much are you looking to spend??

jhwang5 9y ago
Dumb comparison. At least medicine heals people.

marcrosoft 9y ago

I support the ability for Google to make this decision but we should not be celebrating this as a good thing. Instead, it should strike fear. Google has a disproportionate amount of influence through its ads and cannot act in the best interest of all individuals.

gowld 9y ago
The harms deriving from the possibility of doing bad must be balanced against the harms deriving from unwillingness to do good. Allowing toxic ads should strike fear as well, that browsing online is an unsafe "back alley" full of scams.

pmarreck 9y ago

ICO = IPO without all those pesky regulations and gated access. Which is both good and bad, of course.

orthecreedence 9y ago
No, it's just bad. It's the stupidest thing ever. ICOs are so incredibly stupid that it's mind boggling. "Hey, give us $50,000 and we'll give you a token that will hopefully be worth 10x once we dupe a bunch of other suckers like you! If you're really, really lucky we'll build something marginally useful and might even use that token you bought to power it! Now you can use your $50,000 in tokens to power a decentralized photo sharing app that you could have gotten for free by just using google drive! Woww!"

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago

As always the typical hn reader is completely oblivious to the actual reasons why Google banned crypto related ads. For those who don't know, phishing has been plaguing Google ads and that is likely their primary reason for doing away with crypto ads, NOT because it has anything to do with ICOs. But why bother preaching it to the wrong choir... You guys know everything here.

intrasight 9y ago

I thought it was a fad that had already passed. I'm sort of surprised to see this level of discussion about cryptocurrency.

wslh 9y ago

It is interesting to note that OTOY will launch RNDR (Render Token) [1] in Ethereum and their advisory board includes Eric Schmidt from Google [2]. [1] https://rendertoken.com/ https://rendertoken.com/ [2] https://home.otoy.com/advisory-board/ https://home.otoy.com/advisory-board/

mancerayder 9y ago

Did Google ban all scam ads out there? Is predatory lending banned? How about magical thinking supplements, systems, and other scams? Also, wallets? What did the crypto wallet makers do wrong? This, my friends, is monopoly capitalism at its finest; when corporate interests are threatened they come down on information exchange, which means they can disappear products. And since it's privately owned and not state owned, everyone's okay with it morally. Because cryptocurrency is naughty. Let's ban drug discussion, too, it's naughty. How about hate speech, let's disappear search results for that. Who needs Big Brother when a massive surveillance apparatus that, quite frankly, is a headache to avoid (although I use duckduckgo and Firefox for all non tech stuff) can also disappear ideas and products without a popular vote or accountability? One plus of all this is I won't have to see the Crypto Genius Reveals Next Bitcoin ad with the pic of the guy staring off in the distance in crooked glasses. Always hated that one.

warent 9y ago
Are you proposing that an ad for a placebo is as damaging as an ad encouraging people to gamble their life savings (bonus: on what may be nothing more than a pump and dump scheme)? As an aside, I'm not sure what drug discussion or hate speech has to do with this at all.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  You've missed the point and are throwing a false equivalence argument at me. It's not about what's bad or not bad, it's about a non-elected, unaccountable corporation deciding what (non-illegal) content to make vanish. Just because you think all cryptocurrency is a scam doesn't mean it is. My drug discussion example is another example of protecting people from themselves (in the same way you want to protect them from the cryptocurrency world because your personal feelings have directed you towards the word 'damaging').
- mancerayder 9y ago
  Peter Hetherington, chief executive of IG Group, Europe’s largest retail trading website, said consumers would be “more likely to end up with reputable brokers and proper regulatory protection” following the changes. But he warned that there were wider implications for financial services, saying: “Big American tech companies are increasingly influential in deciding how financial services products are marketed. This is fine if they get to the right answer . . . but a worrying precedent if they do not, since the normal checks and balances do not apply to their decisions.” ("Google to ban cryptocurrency adverts", Financial Times, March 15, 2018)

wxyyxc1992 9y ago

The bubble is too big, dont be evil

dorianm 9y ago

Does it mean I can't advertise the points project on Google? https://pointsproject.org https://pointsproject.org

arisAlexis 9y ago

google lost the blockchain race..