Twitter’s Ban on Cryptocurrency Sends Bitcoin Value Dipping Below $8,000

Twitter, one of the leading online news and social networking service, has banned cryptocurrency ads in a move to repress illegal activities sending the value of bitcoin dropping below 8,000 dollars.

The prohibition follows the leads of Facebook and Google, which did the same earlier on and will come into effect beginning Tuesday 27. The rollout will take 30 days and it will affect the advertising of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and sales of virtual currency tokens.

The ban is aimed at protecting users of the social site from being duped or falling victims of fraud. Facebook was the first to suppress the ads in January followed by Google earlier this month.

According to Google’s financial policy, “cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice)” are banned.

In a statement, Twitter said it is committed to ensuring the safety of the Twitter community, and that is why it added a new policy for Twitter Ads relating to cryptocurrency.

Several startups have taken advantage of the ICOs to raise billions of dollars in a highly volatile, free market.

“We know that this type of content is often associated with deception and fraud, both organic and paid, and are proactively implementing a number of signals to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner,” Twitter said.

Despite the ban, Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, believes that bitcoin will be the leading currency within 10 years.

This also comes at a time when Bitcoin has had its fair share of ups and downs. In 2017, it hit the roof and dropped many times. Th same can be said about other types of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or low-liquidity assets including Ripple as well.

Some cryptocurrencies are legitimate, however, most of them have turned out to be scams, cheating investors out millions of dollars. Many threat actors and fraudsters are running malicious websites masquerading as legitimate cryptocurrency exchanges.