China’s Baidu and Weibo Not Allowing Any Crypto Ads

• China’s Baidu, the largest search engine and Weibo, a social media channel are not allowing any ads with terms “bitcoin”, “cryptocurrency” and “ICO”
• After banning the cryptocurrency trading and bitcoin mining in the country, China took a move similar to Facebook

China’s Largest Search engine and social media channel banning crypto ads

As a part of the increasing cryptocurrency regulation in the country, China is now censoring any crypto related advertisements on search engines and social media. As reported by the South China Morning Post, China’s major social media networks, that are similar to Facebook, and the search engines had banned ads for bitcoin among other cryptocurrencies and ICOs.

Baidu, the largest search engine in China and Weibo that is basically the Twitter of China, do not list any ads for the Chinese versions of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, and ICO keywords. Though Weibo has already confirmed that they are not allowing any cryptocurrency related advertisements, at present, Baidu is yet to confirm if they have officially banned them.

Last September, China’s initial ban on crypto exchanges went into effect. However, a few exchanges were still operating from either Japan or Hong Kong and Chinese government wanted to ban access to all the exchange platforms along with ICOs for both domestic and foreign platforms. After that, the bitcoin miners were guided towards an orderly exit from the business.    

Now, the ban on cryptocurrency ads is China’s new move. It has been suggested by the SCMP reports that this could be due to government’s concern on ICO’s being fraudulent.

China following Facebook’s “Ban all crypto ads”

Similar to Facebook’s ban on all ads that are promoting ICOs and cryptocurrencies on the basis that it did not want the advertisers to use their platform to basically market the “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices”.

However, Facebook’s ban on crypto advertising has been seen as a positive action as it has been believed that it will help in protecting the unsuspecting investors who got into the crypto market on the basis of these videos and social media promotions on Facebook.

Recently, a major fraud case happened. Bitconnect that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme offered lucrative referral deals and unrealistic profits. Most of such companies took to video sharing websites and social media to draw investors. This led to Bitconnect platform to shut down along with being sued for fraud.

After the Facebook’s ban on crypto ads, people talked about using other channels to promote their content. However, this isn’t possible for China as the central government here manages the online content with a strong hand. With the scope of internet censorship in China being too big, there would be a bigger effect of the ban on cryptocurrency ads. Furthermore, this would leave the availability of alternative platforms close to none.

The Chinese ban on cryptocurrencies can be gainful for other countries as the crypto-related businesses and bitcoin miners will now seek other options just like Singapore and Japan.

What are your views on China’s strict ban on crypto trading, miners and now ads? Let us know your thoughts in our comment section below!