With Spain taking a stand against on the lofty promises made by some cryptocurrency advertising, the UK government plans to follow suit.

Her Majesty’s Treasury has today published plans to, “bring the promotion of cryptoassets within the scope of financial promotions legislation”. Essentially this would bring crypto advertising in line with the standard applied to the stock market or insurance products.

“Cryptoassets can provide exciting new opportunities, offering people new ways to transact and invest – but it’s important that consumers are not being sold products with misleading claims,” says Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak.

This announcement comes off of the back of research conducted by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK which highlighted the potential for harm misleading crypto advertising could have.

That study found that while ownership of cryptocurrencies has increased by 2.3 million over the last year, the level of understanding what a person is buying has declined.

Perhaps more concerning is that the research highlights that folks don’t see cryptocurrency as a gamble anymore but rather as an alternative to other mainstream investments. We should point out that even when it comes to so-called “mainstream investments” there is a level of risk that one could technically refer to as taking a gamble.

The Treasury is eyeing an amendment to the Financial Promotion Order with a view to mitigating the risk of consumer harm.

We suspect there will be more calls from governments around the world as regards cryptocurrency advertising and if we’re honest, we’re glad to see this happening even if lawmakers are somewhat late to the party.

Now we await the discovery of NFTs by lawmakers.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]