Last Updated on 42 mins by John Piper

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is investigating several firms for misleading advertisements in the cryptocurrency space.

Bloomberg reports that Juliana Gruenwald, a representative of FTC, stated that cryptocurrency firms facing a probe were subject to “possible misconduct regarding digital assets.” However she did not specify which firms were involved or what was the original cause for the probe’s launch.

Recently, cryptocurrency has seen a lot of false advertising. Celebrities and firms have been criticised for their advertising practices.

Two celebrities were involved in endorsing FTX shortly before it crashed and went bankrupt. Kim Kardashian was also involved in an undisclosed, paid promotion. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) fined Kim Kardashian.

The FTC released a report in the middle of this year that revealed that almost half of all cryptocurrency scams originate from social media platforms. Despite Twitter’s open-speech policies, and the general adoption of crypto, it wasn’t included in the list of social media-based cryptocurrency scams. The top crypto-scam platforms were Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, all of which fall under Meta’s social platforms.

A new analysis shows that consumers have lost more than $1B in #cryptocurrency-to-scams since 2021. Most of the losses consumers reported were to bogus cryptocurrency investment scams: https://t.co/MYGTcaw1aS #DataSpotlight /1

— FTC (@FTC) June 3, 2022

Six months ago, the FTC had issued a warning to investors about a specific ATM-based crypto scam. This alerted them to what to watch out for.

Despite cryptocurrency being subject to more regulation, investors continue to fall for new schemes. To ensure your funds are safe, it is important to be cautious when dealing with new projects. In case of platform crashes or withdrawals becoming impossible, it is a good idea to keep your funds safe in secure storage and self-custody.

Coin Insider’s first article, Crypto firms investigated for misleading advertisements appeared on Coin Insider.