As I'm sure anyone reading this will be very well aware that all manner of internet based companies have decided to ban the advertising of ICO's for crypto Currency tokens. These are not ill informed non tech savvy companies. Instead the are companies that owe their own fortune to the paradigm shift that quick adoption of technology.
Facebook, Twitter and even edit have moved to ban such adverts.
The question is why?
Conspiracy theorists will point out that blockchain technology and the decentralisation it brings is a fundamental threat to these companies. Its not as if we haven't seen this sort of inertia to change in past industries. The music industry in particular clung onto physical releases while the world moved to digital downloads.
It could be argued that speeding up the transition to a decentralised internet is the cyber equivalent of these companies signing their own death warrant. These companies have only just figured out how to massivly profit from thier technology. A delay even by a year would give them a chance to capitalise and respond to the threat.
The question is, will banning ICO advertising on their platforms have that effect?
The genie is absolutely out of the bottle. If anything such bans are creating new opportunities for competing platforms such as steemit, telegram and discord. I presonally find the narrative of these companies trying to quash the competition interesting but unlikely. As much as i believe that these companies don't really like the idea of being replaced, i don't believe their corperate nature would facilitate such a move.
What is more likely is that these companies are not short of advertising revenue. Each of the Crypto ICO's represent single companies with little chance of repeat business. Its improbable that they will return to advertise on the platform after their ICO. I would also imagine that these low return advertisers are responsible for many complaints. And handling such complaints is time consuming and expensive.
From the perspective of facebook, is far better to fill you advertising slots with macdonalds or cocacola . I would imagine that the issue is simply advertising crypto ICO's are not worth the hassle.
Government banning Crypto is a different matter. This is absolutely about being in control of the money supply. Its a very dangerous and untested situation for a county to be out of control of their finances. Governments Tax their citizens in a number of ways. But the most hidden is inflation. Being able to print money and inject it directly into the treasury does devalue the cash held by each and every citizen using it. It'd far easier to just turn on the virtual printing press that risk publicly raising taxes.
Should crypto currency take off in the way i'd expect governments will need to come up with a totally new system for taxation. This will be a more open Tax system, not necessarily fairer, but more honest.
Such a change would be massive for any country. It would be expensive and a gamble. Since most western leaders are elected for 4-5 years it is likely they may just slow this down enough for the next one to handle. Embracing crypto currencies is a 'courageous', and risky strategy. And their is certainly little gained for being the first.
I would expect all parties to be actively working on ways to harness the technology, and adopt it in the future.
But its very new, and just like the dot com boom, it took governments laws a long time to catch up.
For now, the easiest way to attempt to take control of the situation is to ban it. I can't see this strategy working in a globalised virtual economy.
Time will tell.
