What the crypto advertising guidelines mean

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Editor's note: They’re everywhere. On your phone, all over social media and even your morning paper. There isn’t anyone today who hasn’t seen a crypto advertisement somewhere. In fact, crypto firms were able to sell you claims about outlandish returns, all without any accountability.  The Advertising Standards Council of India is clearly unhappy with that. Today, ASCI released a set of guidelines for ads related to “virtual digital assets'', effective 1 April. Given how crypto investments and products are picking up across India, we decided to break our regular publishing schedule and put out this note.   A few key points in ASCI’s guidelines:  All advertisements related to virtual digital assets in any medium—print, television, radio, digital or social media—must carry a disclaimer saying, “Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions.”  The words “currency”, “securities”, “custodian” and “depositories” can’t be used.Ads should not claim crypto/digital assets are in any way a solution to “money problems, personality problems or other such drawbacks”.No promise of any future gain or profit.No …