On June ten, ane of the top cryptocurrency media sites, CCN, initially announced that it would close down, citing a June 3 Google Core Update for stifling its traffic.

Writing on the website, the manager and founder of CCN Markets and Hawkfish AS, Jonas Borchgrevink, blamed the update for an overnight autumn of 71% of the site's mobile traffic. While Borchgrevink noted that ups and downs are part of the business, such a vertiginous autumn is unprecedented in its history. At the time of the post, the founder said that information technology could not support new additions to its squad or its current operations from advertiser revenue in the given climate.

Within the online crypto media sphere, CCN was not lone in taking a beating. According to data from Sistrix.com, CoinDesk besides experienced a drop in traffic. Crypto news took what some are alleging to be a targeted hammering, even though United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland-based online media juggernaut Daily Mail also reportedly lost half of its organic website traffic.

Related to this: The Strange Case of CCN and the Google June 2022 Cadre Update

At the time of this post on June 10, Borchgrevink and the CCN squad were at a loss as to what could accept merited such a steep drop off in visibility:

"If Google thinks that CCN, suddenly – remember, literally overnight -, is bad, and so why not give united states of america the chance to understand the why and give united states a way to alter before any major update. Instead, nosotros are kicked in the teeth overnight with goose egg knowledge of what we take washed wrong, impacting a squad of lx+ people. 6 years of piece of work is evaporated."

However, only 2 days later, on June 12, CCN reported that it had clawed its way back into being after an intensive menstruation of consulting with SEO gurus and experts in the Google Webmasters forum. In the post, also authored by Borchgrevink, it is clear that the team is still non entirely sure what acquired the drop, but proceed to reference the June 3 update:

"Whether or not the Google June 2022 Core Update is to blame, we are fixing it. We're receiving help from multiple SEO teams to understand what has transpired."

Practiced reaction to CCN'due south cocky-proclaimed struggles

Several members of the crypto community spoke to Cointelegraph, stating that the update serves equally a prominent instance of how powerful, centralized corporations tin currently smother crypto initiatives. Richard Carmine, enquiry lead at Decred, a community-directed digital currency, said the update presents an issue for both freedom of the press and of information:

"Regardless of how people experience most CCN, the fact that changes to Google'due south search algorithm can make or break media producers is i of many illustrations of the power wielded by big tech companies running centralized services. A centralized dominance that can selectively 'hibernate' content signals a broader problem with freedom of the printing and the public'south ability to observe information."

Roneil Rumberg, CEO and co-founder of the decentralized music streaming platform Audius, as well said this is typical of the dangers of centralized power and called for a more transparent approach to online media:

"The unfortunate situation faced by CCN is inevitable when centralized aggregators like Google command content discovery. Those whose livelihood depends on aggregators have fiddling insight into how these services work, allow solitary any say in how they are changed over time. They are subject to the whims of Google, YouTube, SoundCloud, or whoever else they are contributing to, and risk being deplatformed, demonetized, or otherwise taken for granted."

Tak Kol, co-founder of the Orbs public blockchain, as well commented on Google's ability to shape opinions and chosen for change that allows people to protect themselves from what he sees as abuses of such power:

"The state of affairs with CCN and publications like it shows how much ability Google has in dictating which news channels can flourish and which should disappear with a behind-the-scenes change in its algorithm. In that location is a solution to protect ourselves against potential corruption — and this is transparency, through blockchain engineering science. We should need filters like Google to be explicit regarding the criteria of what'south deemed important, and nosotros should demand to audit that this criteria is indeed what's executed under the hood."

Ad nauseam: Google's chequered past with crypto

This is not the commencement fourth dimension that Google appears to accept taken a hard line on decentralization and crypto in general. The nigh prominent example of hostility from Google occured in June 2022, when the company announced that it would ban all crypto-related advert in accordance with an update to its Financial Services policy.

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The official declaration came days after crypto advertisers had noticed a precipitous drop in views for its advertisements. At the time, Google AdWords denied that any change in its regulations would cake crypto or initial coin offering (ICO) ads. However, equally previously reported by Cointelegraph, Google's updated financial products policy clearly stated that an advertisement ban will be imposed on "cryptocurrencies and related content (including but non limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice)."

The move, all the same, was not necessarily out of graphic symbol for Google, with Google's director of sustainable ads, Scott Spencer, demonstrating a hesitant approach to all cryptocurrencies in a March fourteen interview with CNBC:

"We don't have a crystal ball to know where the futurity is going to go with cryptocurrencies, merely we've seen plenty consumer harm or potential for consumer damage that it's an area that we want to approach with extreme caution."

In September, the visitor appear that it would revise its advertisement policy in Oct in gild to allow some crypto businesses targeting the United States and Japan.

Fast-forward to January 2022 and Google's advertizement policy on cryptocurrencies remains relatively unchanged, with smart contract auditing startup Decenter tweeting that the company has blacklisted keywords mentioning Ethereum on Google Ads.

In response, the official Google Ads account replied to the tweet, stating that exchanges are permitted to target the United States and Japan and that ads targeting other countries could be liable for rejection.

Decenter further explained that, when trying to apply "ethereum development services" and "ethereum security audits" as keywords, an mistake message would pop up. Google Ads replied to this in a tweet:

Decenter consequently turned to the Ethereum community on Reddit, where the squad stated:

"Any of the keywords that contain 'ethereum' in our campaigns are no longer showing ads equally of January ninth and are now reporting the following error:"

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At the time, the Reddit post'south pinnacle comment accused Google of a lack of neutrality:

"Google has various political and economical agendas, and they are quite willing to use their various services to promote their preferences. AdSense and Youtube are notorious for this, just there take been some incidents regarding the play shop as well."

Google is not the but centralized tech giant to have a troubled relationship with both crypto and crypto advertizement. Prior to lifting the requirements on May viii for crypto and blockchain promoters to become consent for running advertisements, Facebook had adopted various degrees of censorship.

In January 2022, Facebook decided to ban all cryptocurrency and ICO advertisements — a move that was widely criticized by the crypto community equally unnecessary. Dejun Qian, the founder of Fusion, which provides a financial transaction ecosystem, said:

"This policy will definitely protect people from the scams of predatory projects. However announcing an 'intentionally broad' policy is always the easiest way and not necessarily the all-time route for technology development."

Since and so, Facebook has come to relax its approach to ad equally long as advertisements are not seen to exist promoting ane currency in item or initial coin offerings. And Facebook has since announced that it will launch its own stablecoin.

Read more than on this: Project Libra: What We Know Almost Facebook'southward Forthcoming Cryptocurrency

E-commerce giants show uniform approach to crypto

It is not only big tech that'southward showing resistance to cryptocurrencies. In 2022, two of the world's foremost due east-commerce giants demonstrated varying degrees of hostility to cryptocurrencies and associated cryptocurrency advertising.

On March eighteen, S America's largest due east-commerce company, Mercado Livre, banned cryptocurrency advertizing on its website, according to reporting from Cointelegraph em Portugues. Mercado Livre, which recently overtook Amazon every bit the summit e-commerce market place in Latin America, sent out emails to users that laid out the change in company policy. According to an electronic mail shared with Cointelegraph, all listings related to digital currency would automatically exist removed from the platform as of March 19:

"We would like to inform you lot that as of March 19, yous will no longer be able to annunciate used products in the post-obit categories:

- Cryptocurrencies

- Prepaid cards for games

"Because yous have ads for used products that will soon exist banned, we recommend that you terminate them. Otherwise, they will exist finalized on the engagement mentioned above."

Mercado Livre's biggest rival, Amazon, also demonstrated its less-than-enthusiastic arroyo to cryptocurrencies in 2022. Twitch, a streaming company owned by the U.S. e-commerce behemoth, removed bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) as payment options for subscriptions, according to a Reddit user on March 23.

Payday dejection: Payment providers shut the door on crypto

Although the initial benefits of cryptocurrency for payment providers are numerous, a number of high-profile companies have either removed payment options or outright banned crypto payments.

On May 7, Dovey Wan, a founding partner of Primitive Ventures and a prominent figure in China-related crypto affairs, tweeted that the Chinese social media titan and payment service provider WeChat will ban merchants from making cryptocurrency payments.

A translation of the Payment Service Protocol, posted on weixin.qq.com, revealed that the ban is due to changes in payment regulation and efforts to ensure "the prevention of illegal telecommunication networks and criminal matters" brought nigh past the People's Banking company of China.

As per the screenshot posted by Wan, users who bear out crypto trades are liable to take their accounts terminated. The screenshot also shows that "merchants may non appoint in illegal transactions such as virtual currency."

Unsurprisingly, given the dank atmosphere for cryptocurrencies in China, WeChat is far from alone in its approach. In August 2022, the mobile payment app Alipay clamped down on users who were using their accounts for over-the-counter (OTC) bitcoin trading, according to Beijing News.

As per the state-affiliated Chinese newspaper, Alipay tightened restrictions on and permanently blocked accounts conveying out bitcoin OTC trades. The article likewise stated that a system had been created to monitor cardinal websites and accounts for this purpose.

Misfortune for crypto payments in China connected into 2022, when Alipay and WeChat both requested that crypto commutation Huobi remove their payment services from its OTC trading desk, according to a report past local media agency Sina published on Jan. 25.

Outside of Mainland china, the main financial officeholder of PayPal said that the company is reluctant to get involved with cryptocurrencies, according to an interview with Yahoo Finance on May seven.

CFO John Rainey said that, although the company had previously allowed payments in bitcoin, the volatility of the currency meant that merchants would just convert bitcoin to a more than stable currency, such as the euro or dollar. Rainey commented that, although the company is non currently interested in cryptocurrencies, he did not rule out interest in the future:

"We have teams conspicuously working on blockchain and cryptocurrency likewise, and we want to participate in that in whatever form it takes in the future. I just recollect it's a little early right at present."

BTC cards suffer setback, Visa and Mastercard categorize crypto as loftier-risk

In January, Visa ended its working relationship with debit card provider WaveCrest, affecting crypto carte products provided by CryptoPay, Bitwala, Wirex and others. The move was initially believed to be a company crackdown on cryptocurrency services, only was later revealed to exist due to WaveCrest violating Visa's policies.

A Visa spokesperson commented that the issue came down to noncompliance on WaveCrest's behalf and that it had not adopted a blanket ban on such products:

"We can confirm that WaveCrest'southward Visa membership is beingness terminated due to continued non-compliance with our operating rules. All of WaveCrest's Visa carte du jour programmes will be closed equally a upshot. Visa has other canonical card programmes that employ fiat funds converted from cryptocurrency in a number of jurisdictions. The termination of WaveCrest'due south Visa membership does not touch these other products."

In October, Finance Magnates reported on the news that payment titans Mastercard and Visa would classify cryptocurrency and ICOs equally "loftier risk." The publication, which did not disclose its sources, reported that a ban will be practical to brokers operating from "unregulated or loosely regulated environments," a sweeping description that proved damning for the wave of crypto debit cards. As no universal policy exists for regulating cryptocurrency payments, many companies offering crypto debit bill of fare services could, equally a consequence, be seen as not having applied proper due diligence to their business.

The publication besides referred to regulations brought in past the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in June, establishing leverage limits for local retailers in the European Wedlock. Steve Maijoor, the ESMA chairman, said that the regulation would seek to protect investors:

"The new measures on CFDs will, for the first time, ensure that investors cannot lose more money than they put in, restrict the employ of leverage and incentives, and provide understandable risk warnings for investors."

Unregulated brokers are reportedly classified equally "loftier-risk securities merchants" past the two biggest debit/credit card issuers. Mastercard acted on Oct. 12, 2022, and the subsequent changes would bear upon "all transaction globally via Mastercard, Debit Mastercard, and Maestro."

The move to target crypto debit cards is non that surprising, given the views of management at the two payment giants. Mastercard CEO Ajaypal Banga voiced his criticism of cryptocurrencies, stating that nonstate-issued coins are junk, due to their high volatility and the equally-of-yet unrealized goal of operating as a real alternative to fiat currency.

To strengthen the narrative, Mastercard released a series of anti-bitcoin videos, narrated past the president of Mastercard Southeast Asia, Matthew Driver, in which he questioned the bearding nature of crypto transactions:

"If it's an anonymous transaction, that sounds like a suspicious transaction. Why does somebody need to be bearding?"