What does the Ad ban mean for the Future of Cryptocurrency?

According to most of the established currencies, not a lot. In fact, some have welcomed the move.

The media has been full of news that “Big Tech” names such as Facebook, Twitter and Google are banning all advertising relating to cryptocurrency, wallets and ICOs for the foreseeable future. The word that should be noticed most is the word “advertising”. Google et al are not censoring all content relating to the crypto world, just the paid advertising.
Of course, the new start-up that was on the verge of marketing their ICO or their wallet (waiting for the time when they had a finished product to market) will feel the pinch. However, that isn’t going to put a dent in the already established coins, wallets and exchanges that currently exist.
As of April 2018, there were over 1500 cryptocurrencies already in existence. That is more than 8 times the number of fiat currencies* circulating today. I’ll let you think on that for a moment.

Breaking the Marketing Mold
Now the race is on for the organic Google (and the rest of the search engines) ranking. It will also be entirely up to the wallet developers, ICO organizers and crypto-exchange brokers to PROVE their legitimacy. Google has actually made the exception for public companies listed on major stock exchanges, presumably in the belief that no company would risk itself or its shareholders by touting an illegitimate scam. However, that still leaves the small and privately held companies out in the cold no-man’s-land, fighting for the top spot in search engine ranking.
New brands will need to distance themselves from standardized methodology and old models for marketing and explore new ways of getting the message out. If this means taking a step back from the “Big Tech” names, then that is what they need to do. If this creates new web spaces for “banned” groups to socialize and spread the word then that is a risk that Facebook, Twitter and all the rest will have to deal with.
A lot of the new start-ups, those with upcoming ICO releases and product launches, don’t think that the ban will make much difference to their campaigns. Their marketing is already linked closer to the telegram groups and forums than it ever was to the social media platforms and Google. Already the shift has started. Let’s not forget that it is ONLY advertising that is being banned. Good content spread across the platforms, which gains likes, shares, follows and retweets, is still going to get the message out on social media.

Consensus in the Crypto Community
Among the old and new groups, this news is actually seen as a good thing. The move by big names to take a stand in the fight against fraudulent “crypto hangers-on” is great news. Established cryptocurrency groups have taken a lot of bad publicity by being lumped together with the scammers and con-artists. And cryptocurrency itself is being touted by the haters as ALL being a scam. That’s bad news for the future of cryptocurrency and for the future implementation of the blockchain in other fields.
Most of the well-known names in the community (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. you know a few more) believe that Cryptocurrency regulations and standards for their relatively young industry (10 years is not a long time for tech like this to mature) can only be a benefit, by granting legitimacy to those who earn it and outing the scammers. Creating structure and rules about how ICOs are run, what criteria need to be met for designation as a digital currency (rather than a digital asset or even a security). This advertising ban makes it even more imperative that these rules, regulations and structures are put into place so that there are clear guidelines for what denotes a genuine article and what to look for when banishing a con-artist.

Now What?
There is nothing that will happen overnight. Several countries across the globe, USA, UK, South Korea, and others have plans to publish their country’s crypto rules any time between June and September. At which point the advertising teams at Facebook, Google, and Twitter will be able to set some hard rules to weed out the few bad apples that have been poisoning the crypto barrel. In the meantime, the fight for web traffic and conversion will become a pitched battle, not based on who has the best product, but who has the best marketing team. I’m sure we’ll watch with baited breath.