Email marketing service Mailchimp is allegedly closing all accounts having to do with cryptocurrency-related products and services by April 30, according to a CoinDesk report. This won’t just include advertisements for ICOs, but also crypto news firms, and even books, company announcements, and industry events.
An email obtained by CoinDesk from Mailchimp to a customer explained that the company was making the decision to nix all crypto email campaigns because they are "too frequently associated with scams, fraud, phishing, and potentially misleading business practices."
This is the second instance I hear of @mailchimp shutting down accounts related to Cryptocurrencies . Not ones advertising ICOs, or even exchanges. Just news, books, event announcements. https://t.co/R424TfN50W
— Andreas M. Antonopoulos (@aantonop) March 29, 2018
Although Mailchimp “[recognizes] Blockchain technology is in its infancy and [that it] has tremendous potential," the company has gone so far as to update its Acceptable Use Policy to bar any crypto-related activity “to protect the millions of businesses that use MailChimp for their marketing.”
They're closing the Cryptocurrency Jobs account as well.
— Cryptocurrency Jobs (@jobsincrypto) March 29, 2018
The Acceptable Use Policy now reads that “...[Mailchimp] cannot allow businesses involved in any aspect of the sale, transaction, exchange, storage, marketing or production of cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, and any digital assets related to an Initial Coin Offering, to use MailChimp to facilitate or support any of those activities."
Troubling Trends
Mailchimp’s decision is the latest in a series of social media firms who have placed bans or other restrictions on cryptocurrency-related advertising.
Facebook was the first major platform to bar cryptocurrency advertisements from its site, making its ban official at the end of January 2018. Several weeks later in mid-march, Google began purging cryptocurrency-related advertisements. After weeks of rumors, Twitter announced its own ban on crypto-related advertising on Monday, March 26.
However, Mailchimp’s ban does seem to be more extreme than the others, which were more specifically targeted toward ICO-related advertising.
