Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong caused an almighty splash on X this week — claiming the exchange’s new TV advert had been banned in the U.K.
There’s just one problem: that isn’t actually true.
The two-minute film casts a rather bleak picture of Britain and depicts people living in leaky houses on rat-infested streets, with the characters singing “everything is just fine” as the lights cut out and doors fall off their hinges.
Image: CoinbaseOther scenes show shoppers dancing in supermarkets as they buy “£100 meals,” with a checkout screen breaking because of the price of fish fingers.
As maintenance workers are showered in sewage on damp streets, an affluent couple in a convertible sing: “We’re off to Dubai, it’s time to jump ship.”
And as a rat is kicked into the air — with bags of rubbish colliding and creating an explosion of litter — a message appears on screen, followed by the Coinbase logo:
“If everything’s fine, don’t change anything.”
After the advert was published on Coinbase’s official X account, Armstrong had written:
“We weren’t allowed to run this ad on TV in the U.K., but that’s fine, we can just share it online. We’re using humor to make a very important point: the current financial system simply doesn’t work for most people. It needs to be updated.”
He doubled down on this a few days later, claiming that the ad was “banned” by British television networks, and Coinbase was being censored.
Cryptonews reached out to Coinbase twice to ask for evidence to back up these claims — but the exchange told us it had “nothing to add.”
Unconvinced, we decided to go directly to the organizations responsible for regulating adverts on British television to find out what’s going on.
Whenever a new TV advert is created, it needs to be approved by an organization called Clearcast. It checks whether commercials follow the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising — known as BCAP for short — which aims to ensure ads are “legal, decent, honest and truthful.” In a statement, Clearcast told Cryptonews:
“Clearcast reviewed a pre-production script and rough cut for this advert. We considered that it presented cryptocurrency as a potential solution to economic challenges, without sufficient evidence for this claim or any warnings about the potential volatility and risks. We concluded that it did not comply with the BCAP code and advised that we could not approve this approach.”
As you can see above, Coinbase’s video doesn’t include any of the disclaimers required in adverts for financial services — statements that make it clear investments can go down as well as up. Clearcast later told us:
“For clarification, we did not ‘ban’ the ad, as that can only be done by the regulator (the Advertising Standards Authority) after an ad makes it to air.”
OK, so has the Advertising Standards Authority banned the advert, then? A spokesperson told Cryptonews:
“No, the ASA hasn’t banned this ad. We don’t pre-clear ads. We respond to concerns about ads once they’re in the public domain.”
Put another way, Brian Armstrong’s been pretty misleading here — falsely claiming that Coinbase is being censored in order to rack up hits online. And it seems the strategy has worked, given the ad has generated millions of views in under a week.
Image: CoinbaseCryptonews went back to Coinbase after receiving confirmation that the advert hasn’t been banned, with a spokesperson saying:
“The ‘ban’ in question reflects that Everything Is Fine was rejected by Clearcast for broadcast TV.”
A rejection isn’t the same as a ban.
The manufactured controversy comes amid claims that a new law in the U.K. called the Online Safety Act is stifling free speech online. Some of the measures it imposes include mandatory age verification checks for adult content.
Aside from the fact that the Coinbase advert hasn’t been banned, there’s another issue worth reflecting on here: many Britons didn’t like it.
Critics claim the American company has suffered a “huge cultural miss” in its attempts to appeal to a U.K. audience — and the ad’s unflattering depiction of British life risks alienating more consumers than it attracts.
Some on Reddit have described the commercial as “predatory,” and argue it’s ludicrous to suggest that highly volatile cryptocurrencies are the answer to a cost-of-living crisis still affecting millions of people. Others called it “arrogant” and a “tasteless piece of s***.”
The advert might not be appearing on TV anytime soon — but given the reaction online, Coinbase probably won’t care.
The post Exclusive: Coinbase Advert Hasn’t Been Banned in the U.K. appeared first on Cryptonews.
