Twitter gears up to ban most cryptocurrency ads

Earlier this month, Twitter announced its plans to begin cracking down on cryptocurrency spam accounts. If you're a regular Twitter user, you've likely encountered them before: accounts that exist for no other reason than to part gullible people from their cryptocurrency. As it turns out, that isn't the only thing Twitter is going to do to cut back on the amount of cryptocurrency spam on its platform, as it will soon be restricting certain ads as well.

In fact, to hear Reuters explain it, it sounds like Twitter is going to cut back on most cryptocurrency advertising. The move, which was announced today, will see Twitter ban ads for initial coin offerings and token sales in an attempt to curb the potential for fraud. Obviously, Twitter doesn't want to risk advertising potentially fraudulent ICOs on its very popular platform, so this ban certainly makes sense when you look it at that way.

Twitter isn't stopping there, though. The company will also ban advertisements from exchanges and wallets "unless they are public companies listed on certain major stock markets." When we take all of these bans together, it certainly seems like Twitter is about to purge the majority of cryptocurrency advertising from its platform.

Twitter isn't the only one to do so, either. Facebook is implementing similar measures to cut back on the amount of cryptocurrency marketing that appears on its website, and Google has its own restrictions rolling out later this year. In fact, we may have Facebook and Google to thank for Twitter ramping up its fight against deceptive cryptocurrency practices, as it told Reuters it faced calls to do more after the other two companies announced their plans.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter aren't alone in trying to figure out how to handle this large spike in cyrptocurrency interest. Regulators around the world are trying to figure what to do with the huge cryptocurrency market as well, so this attempt to tame what is basically a wild west is coming from multiple angles. Twitter's new advertising rules will go into effect over the next 30 days, so look forward to seeing far fewer cryptocurrency advertisements soon.