By Richard Davis
The Belgium government has mandated that every firm offering crypto advertisements should register with it before launching any campaign. Henceforth, any crypto advertisement with the government’s backing would be treated as an offense with heavy consequences.
According to the report, the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) of Belgium recently announced that every potential crypto advert must go through it. In addition, the financial regulators reportedly planned to release a new set of regulations to guide the conduct of crypto adverts in the country on May 17.
Furthermore, Belgium’s Official Gazette recently broadcasted that all crypto campaigns must contain all necessary risk information and be accurate. After incorporating the details, the advert should pass through FSMA before publicly displaying it. In other words, the regulators mandated adverts firms to submit crypto adverts targeting 25,000 and above customers to them henceforth.
According to Jean-Paul Servais, the FSMA’s Chairman, the Financial Services and Market Authority plans to increase its involvement in financial and supervision education to improve crypto consumers’ protection further. He added that the new crypto adverts regulation would enable the regulator to vet and check the accuracy and genuineness of any crypto campaign. More so, he said, it would allow them to ensure crypto ads contain necessary risk information. Consequently, they would successfully prevent crypto investors from being misinformed or deceived concerning the risk involved in any advertised crypto project.
Europe Regulators Planned To Regulate Crypto Ads
Recent market research conducted by FSMA revealed that most crypto investors in Belgium were motivated by crypto’s money-making opportunities. More so, it showed that most investors are men, occupying 80%.
Meanwhile, since the collapse of the FTX network, the crypto market has been struggling to recover from the winter condition it plunged into. However, despite the harsh market conditions, crypto users are still rapidly growing daily.
Hence, many governments worldwide are concerned by the rate at which many people invest in crypto without fully understanding its financial risks. Consequently, one of their consumer protection action was to curb crypto adverts’ malpractices and misinformation. Many European countries like the United Kingdom have already imposed a stan restriction on cryptocurrency advertisements in its territory. Meanwhile, Belgium is the latest country in Europe to thread the crypto ads regulation path.