Advertising in Crypto has often tried to sell a revolution.
“If everything is okay, don’t change anything,” says the latest Coinbase TV advertising as Britain crumbles in the background. Larry David’s FTX ad compared crypto to the invention of the wheel, though his character was not convinced.
But even campaigns that are not so provocative are still inseparable from the world’s worldview. A worldview that challenges the economic and societal norms we live by.
Crypto’s products raise questions about control, access and trust. And that is why the industry’s messages and ads so often read as advocacy. This political worldview is also one of the reasons why the industry and its advertising have been subjected to so much oppression over the years.
From the beginning, the digital asset industry has placed itself as a strengthening and democratizing strength. It has questioned centralized monetary policy and proposed alternatives to how traditional financial systems work. This is not neutral positions.
This threat to anchored systems designated by the industry is a factor in why regulation about what digital asset companies can do or say have taken so long to develop. Even today, when advertisements from cryptic companies affect these systemic criticisms, some members of the public commit offense and the supervisory authorities get in the way of distribution.
Coinbases now infamous UK ad, taking the spirit of Crypto Advocacy to its logical and creative conclusion, is a perfect example. Its message that Crypto gives a potential response to a broken economy may not have mentioned a party or candidate, but it still made a strong claim of politics and pointed a finger to what is not working in modern Britain.
Clearcast, the body that says yes or no, as ads can run on British television networks, rejected the ad on the grounds that it “presented cryptocurrency as a potential solution to financial challenges, without sufficient evidence of this claim or any warnings about the potential volatility and risks”.
Even when crypto -messaging faces rejection from regulators and broadcast platforms, the major political actors, especially in the United States, begin to embrace it.
Not despite his political tone, but because of it.
On a recent panel, Trump strategist Chris Lacivita and Democratic Campaign David Plouffe rarely found agreement: Crypto is now a political issue worth supporting. Lacivita called it a “classic growth question” that opened doors for young and minority voters, while Plouffe warned:
“Tens of thousands of millions of Americans have a great desire to be part of this. So as a politician it is very dangerous to say: We will ignore you.”
Both Lacivita and Plouffe said that crypto ownership has become such an important social question that it can swing the whole voters. The parties notice, take out positions and transform financial ecosystems when they win.
In a world where even the idea of a single-edition Crypto voter is taken seriously by campaign strategists, how can anyone be surprised that the industry sounds political?
The argument as to whether to deal with advertising affecting political issues has been raged for over a decade ever since social media became a dominant strength of modern American election cycles. What began as a concern for transparency in democratic campaigns has since evolved into a much broader question: Who gets talking and on what conditions when the message challenges the status quo?
Supervisory authorities and distribution platforms often claim that there is a clear, technical line between political and non-political content. In practice, that’s not how it works. What counts as political often depends on the moment. Messages allowed one year can be blocked in the next, as rules are changed by social media platforms or legislative bodies.
Take the EU’s incoming Transparency and Targeting Political Advertising Act As an example. This new rule, which will come into force in October 2025, will tighten what is considered political content and expand the definition to include any ad that may have an impact on public opinion on the policy. In response to this, Meta and Google have already said that they will end all political, election and social issues that advertise in the EU when the rules come into force in October. This is a perfect example of a regulation that, although well -meaning, could one day cause unfortunate roadblocks.
If crypto ads increasingly sound like political speech, it’s not a mistake. It is a reflection of what the product actually represents and online media platforms should not get in the way of it.
The future of the industry is one where digital assets become an increasingly current part of our daily lives. As these technologies become deeper rooted, the alternatives they offer will only become more important to humans. The oscillation of ‘Crypto -Voting’ in the United States election cycle of 2024 will undoubtedly be replicated in other democracies around the world, and several parties will make it part of their political platforms.
There will be more and more crypto ads that speak directly to the social problems that the industry represents. This is something to be expected and embraced, not feared or suppressed. In order for innovations to have influence, we need to let their communication be provocative, free -speaking and in every way – political.
It is only then that we will be able to have open and honest conversations about what is broken in our current system and how we can solve it.
