A recent trend of banning advertisements pertaining to cryptocurrencies seems to be raising concerns about a possible conflict of interests at Twitter. While other major players in advertising such as Google and Facebook have implemented strong policies aimed at preventing cryptocurrencies and ICOs from being promoted on their platforms, Twitter has been far less decisive in its response to the matter. Some industry watchers are beginning to speculate that the problem is with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who also happens to be the CEO of Square Inc. The latter company started offering BitCoin exchanges in early February and is reportedly seeking to expand on the cryptocurrencies included in its services. The underlying issue stems from the fact that so many fraudulent or deceptive cryptocurrency companies have cropped up over the past several months. Following bans implemented by other companies, Twitter eventually implied that it was working on a solution to the problem, with Dorsey tweeting that the company is “on it” but has yet to take any concrete action, save from banning individual accounts.
On the other hand, Twitter may also be hesitant to enforce a wider policy because advertising is one area where the company lags well behind the competition. According to the source, the company is only forecast to hold around 2.1-percent of the market in mobile advertising in 2018. That’s as compared to Facebook and Google at 26-percent and 33.2-percent, respectively. Continuing to allow advertising for cryptocurrencies and startups in the field could feasibly help the firm gain ground in that area, though it isn’t immediately clear how much market share it could ultimately grab.
In the meantime, Twitter actually posted its first-ever profit during Q4 2017, so it isn’t likely to want to change too many parameters right now anyway. That’s especially true with consideration for the fact that both Twitter and Square Inc. are presently on the rise. However, the pressure to do something about what is beginning to seem like a very real problem is almost certainly going to continue mounting. Whether or not it eventually forces Dorsey to make a decision about allowing cryptocurrencies to continue being advertised on the microblogging platform remains to be seen.