What’s happening? The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) stated that more than 400 advertisements on cryptocurrencies featuring social media influencers, on different platforms had violated their guidelines so far in 2022, the Economic Times reported. In the past five months, ASCI took up 453 complaints where 419 required modifications as they were found to be in violation of one or more crypto or influencer criteria. Notably, a majority of the complaints were against influencers. What did ASCI say? Manisha Kapoor, chief executive of ASCI, said to ET, “Some influencers talk so confidently about crypto without fully understanding it. It does create an impression that it is safe, it's fine and a cool thing.” Why does it matter? Amid a rising market in 2021, crypto currency companies flooded audio-video streaming platforms and social media networks with advertisements and branded promotions featuring arrays of popular faces, from influencers to Bollywood starlets. These aggressive marketing campaigns blatantly disregarded existing advert norms but were massively successful in introducing thousands of Indians to the crypto market, which after a couple of growth intensive years, is currently in a free fall. `Crypto companies’ aggressive marketing in 2020-21: Top crypto exchanges such as Coin DCX and CoinSwitch Kuber brought on board Bollywood stars Ayushmann Khurrana and Ranveer Singh, respectively, for campaigns during the ICC T20 World Cup and the cash rich Indian Premier League. Most of these ads centred on how "easy it is to invest" in crypto currencies. Crypto platforms had spent as much as…
