The US Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating cryptocurrency companies’ misleading advertisements.
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into whether or not some cryptocurrency companies’ ads were deceptive or misleading.
A spokeswoman for the FTC, Juliana Gruenwald, told Bloomberg on December 6 that the agency is looking into “several firms for possible wrongdoing with digital assets.”
Gruenwald didn’t say more about which companies were being looked into or what had started the investigation.
But this year, misleading advertising and promotions have been a hot topic in the U.S.
Related: A cryptocurrency entrepreneur loses £21 billion in three days.
Kim Kardashian was fined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in October for “touting” about the EthereumMax (EMAX) crypto token on social media without saying she was paid $250,000 to do so.
In November, it was said that NFL quarterback Tom Brady and NBA point guard Stephen Curry were among a group of celebrities that the Texas financial regulator was looking into for promoting the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a government agency that works on its own. Its goal is to protect the public from unfair or deceptive business practises by using law enforcement, research, and education.
They sent out a warning about a crypto scam earlier this year. The scam has three main parts: a fake account, a QR code, and a crypto ATM where the victims will be told to send money.
In a report released on June 6, they also said that almost half of all crypto-related scams came from social media platforms in 2021 and that scammers have stolen as much as $1 billion in crypto so far this year.
Cointelegraph asked the FTC for comment but had not heard back by the time the article was published.
Several financial watchdogs and law enforcement agencies around the world have also been working hard to stop misleading crypto ads.
In March, the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told more than 50 crypto-advertising companies that they needed to check their ads to make sure they were legal.
Truth in Advertising, a consumer watchdog group in the United States, called out 19 celebrities in August for allegedly promoting nonfungible tokens (NFTs) without saying how they were involved with the projects.
Related: Cryptocurrency Price Forecast: ETH, BTC, and Cardano, December 5th, 2022
Australia’s financial regulator has also told the crypto industry to be careful about misleading advertising.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) sued the Australian company BPS Financial Pty Ltd (BPS) in October for allegedly making “misleading” claims about its Qoin token.
