THE BAN CLUB

Nakamoto’s remarkable invention has sharply polarised the financial world into Bitcoin/ crypto-currency lovers and haters. For every Japan that has legitimised it, there’s a China that has banned it. For every Canada that has allowed trading, there’s a South Korea that has disallowed it. Fence-sitters, such as India, that let it take root are coming into their own.

Bitcoin is still to recover from the twin blows during January and February, when, within days, South Korea banned it and India declared it ‘not legal tender’. Soon after, Facebook issued a new advertising policy banning ads for “financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and crypto currency”.

“IN TERMS OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES, GENERALLY, I CAN SAY WITH ALMOST CERTAINTY THAT THEY WILL COME TOA BAD ENDING ” WARREN BUFFETT Investor

“IT IS NOT A STABLE STORE OF VALUE, AND IT DOESN'T CONSTITUTE LEGAL TENDER. IT IS A HIGHLY SPECULATIVE ASSET” JANET YELLEN Former Chair of the Federal Reserve

Now, Google has also announced that it is changing its financial services advertising policies, effective from June 1, 2018. It will not allow advertisments about crypto-currencies across any of its platforms.

Bitcoin's price fell from a historic high of $19,783 on December 17, 2017, to a low of $7,178 per BTC, before recovering to above $9,000. Average daily transactions have dropped from over 0.4 million when the price was at its peak to less than half, at around 0.2 million now. The last time it was trading such numbers, Bitcoin was priced at barely $500. “The beauty of cryptocurrencies is that they are regulator proof. No government can prevent the rise of cryptocurrencies. They would need to literally shut down the internet to do so,” says Thomas Glucksmann, APAC Business Development, Gatecoin.