[tifadg1]

> I think we should punish these ads & its associated companies for not indicating that there is risk in investing cryptos.

punish who exactly? an ad agency that took the job or influencer that took the job or an llc registered who knows where?

they should have known better is logical, but when you write something into law it's tricky to convey the spirit. Should an ad agency do due diligence on every product they advertise, even if they understand nothing about it?

[Uehreka]

We already have laws for this and they work, so no need for hemming and hawing. They’re why ads for stock brokers and such have to say things like “investment carries risk” and “past performance is no indication of future returns”. It’s possible those ads are already in breach of these laws, or possibly the regulations just need to be updated to cover crypto companies.

[mbreese]

It’s not the ad agencies or spokespeople that are liable if those disclaimers are removed — it’s the primary company. The ad agency gets paid to produce the ad and help place it on media channels. If there is a legally required warning, that’s up to the customer to provide. The celebrity endorser is a paid performer and nothing more. Their reputation could take a hit from being involved in the ads, but that’s not a legal concern. That said, I do wish them luck in trying to market anything else.

In this case, the customer doesn’t think they are covered by SEC rules because they aren’t trading in securities. The claim being that crypto isn’t a security but rather a commodity, which have fewer regulatory restrictions. However, that’s all about to be tested in court at a massive scale.

[Nextgrid]

> Should an ad agency do due diligence on every product they advertise, even if they understand nothing about it?

Why not? This will cut down on scams and dubious products dramatically, a good thing in my opinion.

[formerkrogemp]

Or, you know we could just ban cryptocurrencies.

[ikt]

There was no crypto involved, just the word.

Before Bitcoin there was 'secret stock trading program that can make you millions!', a few of the scammers literally changed the name from stock trading to crypto trading with the same scam.

For anyone reading you should definitely read up on how these romance scams and finance scams work.

The main thing they try to do is create an emotional connection, because once you're emotionally involved it actually overrides your brains 'logical' side of things, as in emotion is in a different part of the brain and you'll ignore blatant logical issues when you're essentially in love or the deep end. It's interesting to read about at least.

[core-utility]

People get scammed with telephones and 7-eleven gift cards, should we ban those too? Bans only target the symptoms while ignoring the root cause and hurting the 99.999% of valid use in the process.

And as another pointed out, this scam involved no actual crypto.

[toolz]

How do you propose we ban algorithms communicating over networks?

[ivankelly]

name the celebrities at least.

[UnpossibleJim]

https://youtu.be/9hBC5TVdYT8

I can only think of Matt Damon's somewhat notorious Crypto.com commercial, which has been lampooned so many times. There are others, I'm sure.

[baobabKoodaa]

The way these scams work is they use celebrity names and images without permission. Completely different from the Matt Damon case and similar cases, where the celebrity is actually involved.