Google Ad Reveals Search Giant’s Feelings On Bitcoin And Crypto

Google’s past relationship with bitcoin and cryptocurrency has been fraught, to say the least — last month the search giant partially rolled back its ban on advertisements for cryptocurrencies, allowing regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to buy ads in the U.S. and Japan.

The move was widely put down to regulators’ progress in reining in the “wild west” industry, as well as moves by some of the world’s biggest banks and financial services companies to adopt and integrate bitcoin and cryptocurrencies into their products.

Now, in an ad for Google’s new Call Screen service, designed to allow people to interact with callers before answering the phone, the U.S. search giant has joked about the sky-high cost of mining bitcoin and cryptocurrency — with one character in the ad asking another whether he’s “going to live [that cryptocurrency] lie?”