Investing.com - Cryptocurrency prices were broadly lower on Wednesday as Microsoft Bing joined Google and Facebook in banning crypto advertisements.
Bitcoin was trading at $8,177.7 by 12:02AM ET (04:02GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 6.6% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, down 6.4% at $684.4 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token plunged 10.9% higher to $0.66508 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin fell 7.7% to $136.2.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine will no longer show advertising for cryptocurrency, related products, and unregulated binary options, according to reports on Wednesday.
“Because cryptocurrency and related products are not regulated, we have found them to present a possible elevated risk to our users, with the potential for bad actors to participate in predatory behaviours, or otherwise scam consumers,” said Melissa Alsoszatai-Petheo, advertiser policy manager. “To help protect our users from this risk, we have made the decision to disallow advertising.”
The news was reported after Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) introduced a similar ban in January. Advertisements are prohibited to “promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings, or cryptocurrency,” The company said in January.
Meanwhile, Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) also announced a similar move in March. Its internet search engine, Google Chrome, said it removed most extensions with mining scripts from their official online app store Google Play. “Until now, Chrome Web Store policy has permitted cryptocurrency mining in extensions as long as it is the extension’s single purpose, and the user is informed about the mining behaviour. Unfortunately, approximately 90% of all extensions with mining scripts fail to comply with these policies,” Google said.