Facebook has banned all adverts for cryptocurrencies, so you won’t see the likes of Bitcoin or any other virtual coinage being plugged across the social network going forward.

Essentially, the move has been made to protect the Facebook user base from scams which are trying to exploit the current popularity of cryptocurrencies, given the recent meteoric rise (and fall) of Bitcoin which has emblazoned it on the mainstream consciousness.

As Recode reports, Facebook has instigated a new blanket ban policy which “prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency”.

Coining it in

That means no adverts for existing coins, from major players to more minor fish, and the aforementioned initial coin offerings or ICOs – basically the virtual coinage equivalent of an IPO, which as you can imagine, is an area fraught with potential dangers in terms of scams or hackers.

Facebook notes that this policy is ‘intentionally broad’ to play things safe-rather-than-sorry for the moment, while the site works to refine its detection of such scam adverts. That may change in the future though, as Facebook says: “We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”

So this might not be the end of such adverts for good, but it certainly is for the moment.