Britain’s financial services regulator in freshly released updates introduced guidelines to address a surge of scams linked to cryptocurrencies and other investments. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) particularly addressed the scams running on the social media platform.
FCA goes after finfluencers
As per a statement released on Tuesday, the FCA mentioned that all marketing efforts for financial products need to follow principles of fairness, clarity, and transparency. This includes social media memes.
The watchdog stressed the point that there is a need for financial social media influencers to get approval from an FCA-appointed representative. This needs to be done before publishing or broadcasting the advertisements and memes that are linked with financial products and even services. It termed the financial social media influencers as “finfluencers”.
Lucy Castledine, director of consumer investments at the FCA, highlighted the importance of following the legal standards when one is promoting a product. He stated that the agency will take required actions against individuals or entities found in the illegal promotion of financial products.
She added caution that the social media platforms that provide character or space limitations may not always be suitable for promotions.
FCA’s initiative to curb financial products linked memes comes as a part of efforts done to restrict money scams. It is important to note that such types of memes and scams escalated during Covid-19 pandemic. This happened as more consumers turned to online platforms for banking and investment purposes.
A wave of scams coming in?
However, the crypto market was booming and printing similar kind of highs in 2020-21 as we can see these days. As of now, the global digital asset market’s capitalization stands at around $2.64 trillion which is still down by the cap it breached back in 2021.
The FCA in its report revealed that in 2022, the agency had removed over 10,000 misleading advertisements of financial services. The regulator noted that the use of memes in promotional activities is particularly widespread in the crypto industry. With platforms like Telegram and Reddit being hotspots for such content, it has become slightly easy to spread a message.
Watching over the emergence of crypto linked memes on platforms like Telegram and Reddit, the watchdog reminded users that financial promotions on these channels remain subject to regulatory oversight.
The global crypto market is in between a bull run while Bitcoin has already made a new all time high of $73,750. However, it is expected to score more.
