United kingdom Advertising Watchdog Upholds Complaints Against BitMEX Bitcoin Promotion
The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints more than a bitcoin ad placed by crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX (HDR Global Buying and selling).
The advertising regulator printed its decision on Wednesday, stating that it supported the 4 complaints from the ad which had claimed it "failed as one example of the chance of investment," "exaggerated the return around the investment" and "challenged whether or not this was misleading."
The ad, put on Jan. 3, 2019, purportedly to celebrate the tenth anniversary of mining from the first block of bitcoin on a single date in '09, showed a graph spread across two pages, based on the ASA.
The ASA further described the promotion, saying:
It incorporated a footer around the first page of the national newspaper that read "Thanks Satoshi, we owe you one. Happy tenth Birthday, Bitcoin", the graph and text alongside it along with a full-page article compiled by the Chief executive officer and co-founding father of HDR Global Buying and selling Arthur Hayes entitled "Two sides from the gold coin: the bifurcated near-way forward for money."
In the ruling, the watchdog stated that the graph "used a logarithmic scale on its y-axis which resulted in the equally spaced values with that scale didn't increase through the same amount every time and rather elevated by orders of magnitude."
Although it acknowledged that log graphs could be "a valid and helpful method of presenting data," the company stated that interpreting the graph would want some specialist understanding from the subject which, with no associated explanation, the graph "was unlikely to become familiar or readily understandable towards the national newspaper audience with whom the ad was directed."