Twitter is preparing to prohibit a range of cryptocurrency advertisements amid looming regulatory intervention in the sector.

The microblogging platform is following similar moves by Facebook and Google which have restricted financial advertisements due to concerns about illicit activities.

Sky News understands that the new advertising policy will be implemented in two weeks and currently stands to prohibit advertisements for initial coin offerings (ICOs), token sales, and cryptocurrency wallets globally.

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Twitter may also ban all ads for cryptocurrency exchanges, with some limited exceptions, when the policy is launched.


It follows an announcement by Facebook in January that it would begin prohibiting ads that promote financial products and services which are "frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional activities".

On Wednesday, Google announced it too would begin restricting ads for cryptocurrencies and related content, including initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and trading advice services.

Both Facebook and Google also banned ads for binary options trading following the release of figures from Action Fraud that showed victims' losses in Britain have risen by 400,000% in six years.

Earlier this month, Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, warned Sky News that cryptocurrencies faced a regulatory crackdown, stating that the time had come to "regulate elements of the crypto-asset ecosystem to combat illicit activities".

Mr Carney said: "There are a number of problems with cryptocurrencies. They are small now but they are getting bigger.

"We will talk about them at the G20 meeting and we are talking about them now in the Bank of England. The Financial Policy Committee is looking at the risks to financial stability.

"There are issues for authorities who deal with money laundering, terrorist financing and price fixing. There have been a number of incidents of theft - not just big crimes but also steady thefts from people's wallets.

"The operational standards of these currencies are nowhere near where they need to be."

Last September, the US securities regulator issued its first fraud charges in connection with the practice of initial coin offerings - a controversial method of raising capital by creating coins or tokens using the blockchain technology which underpins bitcoin.