Microsoft Corp. announced earlier this week that its native search engine, Bing, will ban all cryptocurrency-related ads by July of this year.

The announcement was made in an official blog post in which the company’s Advertiser Policy Manager, Melissa Alsoszatai-Petheo, made it known to users that in the spirit of “constant work-policy evaluation” and in order to ensure that customers were being provided with the safest and smoothest online experience, Microsoft would ban all crypto-related ads.

The blog post read:

Because cryptocurrency and related products are not regulated, we have found them to present a possible elevated risk to our users with the potential for bad actors to participate in predatory behaviors, or otherwise scam consumers.

Alsoszatai-Petheo elaborated on her company’s stance, writing that the move to disallow advertising for cryptocurrency-related products, and unregulated binary options was driven solely by the economic risks that this market poses to “unsuspecting investors”.

The policy change will come into effect globally in June, and implementation will be enforced by early July.

Bing’s ad ban comes in the wake of similar prohibitions enacted by Facebook, Google and Twitter earlier this year.

BTC price declines further

Over the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency markets have seen declines across the board, with the vast majority of the big digital currency players showcasing bearish signals.

BTC price chart for the past month

After falling below $9,000 on May 11, Bitcoin has continued its sluggish performance, with the currency having fallen below the $8,000 mark. However, despite this most recent decline, a 30-day price index analysis shows that Bitcoin has seen an overall gain of nearly 3 percent during this time window.

Final thoughts

In the past couple of days, cryptocurrencies have been receiving flak from European financial authorities, with Yves Mersch

, a board member at the European Central Bank (ECB), claiming that banks should “segregate” their dealings in cryptocurrencies from their other financial activities.

He made his beliefs abundantly clear when he said that “digital tokens do not qualify as money.”