The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned advertising of cryptocurrency exchange Coinfloor about investing retirement savings in BTC, calling it socially irresponsible.
According to the ASA, an advertisement was posted in the local newspaper Northamptonshire Telegraph on December 3, 2020, where an elderly woman called to use the Coinfloor exchange to create a portfolio of retirement savings in BTC. The woman, who is 63 years old according to the ad, stated:
“Today it makes no sense to keep money in a bank – interest rates are offensive. Therefore, when I received my pension, I invested a third of it in gold, a third in silver, and the rest in bitcoin … ”
The ASA said the ad was “socially irresponsible as it said that buying BTC is a good and safe way to invest your savings or retirement.” According to the regulator, the applicant who challenged the ad said the ad was “misleading” because it did not clarify the risks associated with investing in cryptocurrency.
In response to the complaint, Coinfloor stated that a disclaimer was written in small print at the bottom of the ad, which clarified the risks: “Investing in cryptocurrencies involves significant risk and may result in the loss of your invested capital. You don’t have to invest more than you can afford to lose. ”
“We found the clarification insufficient to counteract the general advertising message that buying bitcoin is a safe investment, and given the font size and layout, it was not presented clearly or prominently enough to make consumers aware of the risk of capital loss.” – stated the ASA.
Coinfloor noted that the elderly woman mentioned in the ad was an exchange customer who expressed her own opinion about investing in BTC, which “does not reflect Coinfloor’s point of view.”
The ASA upheld the complaint and said the ads were “misleading” as they didn’t give “a clear enough idea” that the price of bitcoin could go up or down, or that the BTC market was not regulated in the UK, which also violated advertising laws.
Coinfloor can no longer use these ads in their campaigns. The firm has been warned that it needs to clarify the risks of investing in BTC in future marketing campaigns.
As a reminder, in August 2019, the UK Advertising Standards Authority examined bitcoin-related ads for the crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX.
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