Google Bans Cryptocurrency Ads
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Your Money Briefing. Money and Market Stories from The Wall Street Journal. I'm J.R. Whelan at The Wall Street Journal in New York. Google bans advertising for cryptocurrencies. We'll have details on that in a moment, but first, here are some money items you need to know. From The Wall Street Journal Money Beat team, President Trump's decision to fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could tilt the balance of U.S. foreign policy against major oil producers Iran and Venezuela, thereby boosting oil prices. That's the word from industry analysts. And the White House's move to replace Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo could spell the end for the 2015 international agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program.
If the US were to exit that deal, it would likely result in the reimposition of economic sanctions on Iran that would limit its oil exports and reduce global supply. Lawmakers in Washington have proposed adding a provision to a bank deregulation bill that would require mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider credit scores beyond FICO scores for determining a mortgage applicant's credit worthiness. Fannie and Freddie backed nearly half of all U.S. mortgage dollars originated in 2017, and FICO remains the dominant score for U.S. consumer lending. It also has a big hold on mortgage-related business because its score is the only one lenders can currently use for mortgages they plan to sell to Fannie and Freddie.
And the Wall Street Journal heard on the street team says we should expect consumer spending to pick up. Retail sales weakened for the third month in a row in February, but that lull could have been brought on. after a burst in replacement goods spending that followed a series of strong hurricanes late last summer. Heard on the streets, Justin Layhart says job market strength and fatter paychecks should begin to push retail sales higher through 2018. You're listening to your Money Briefing from The Wall Street Journal. Welcome back, everybody. Google has joined the list of tech companies that have banned ads for cryptocurrencies and other speculative financial products on its advertising platforms.
Wall Street Journal tech reporter Douglas McMillan joins us from our San Francisco bureau to discuss. So Douglas, cryptocurrencies have become very popular and there are probably plenty of opportunities for advertising, but that popularity has raised lots of problems and raised lots of eyebrows among online sites.
Yeah, there are more and more ads for what's called initial coin offerings across the web that are basically advertisements for companies who are unproven startups who raise funds by selling digital currency that is usually cryptocurrency. These are risky investments and more and more people from regulators to us in the press to a lot of experts out there in the world are saying that these could potentially pose a consumer harm to people. So this is one more step. Google is one of the largest advertising companies on the web, and it's coming forward and saying it's going to ban advertisements for cryptocurrency across its ad network on the web. So potentially, it will help protect consumers from losing their retirement account betting on Bitcoin.
Now, Google's ban takes effect in June. You know, the scammers that are behind these ads have become particularly adept at employing a tactic known as crypto jacking to trick web surfers. Can you just explain what that is?
Yeah, this is a particularly scary incarnation of cryptocurrency ads. It's actually more of a form of hacking. And what it is, is in order to create cryptocurrency like a Bitcoin or Ethereum, you need to harness a lot of computing power. So hackers have found a way to insert lines of code in websites sometimes and sometimes even in advertisements that simply by looking at that line of code or looking at that advertisement on a website, a hacker can get control of your computing power and use that to mine for cryptocurrency. So it's a pretty surprising way of generating new cryptocurrency
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