The social media giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter are facing a $300 billion class-action lawsuit by cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, individuals, and companies for banning crypto and blockchain ads.

The class-action claim, which was filed in a court in Australia, will be represented by a Sydney-based law firm, JPB Liberty.

In 2018, all the three industry giants banned crypto ads one after another, claiming that it would be misleading and that it’s a scam in which people could lose their money.

JPB Liberty said,

“A class action will be brought in the federal court of Australia against the social media giants’ Australian subsidiaries and parent companies for breaches of the Australian Competition and Consumer Law.”

Since there were only a few regulated exchanges in 2018, the ad ban affected the entrepreneurs’ business growth, as they were not allowed to use the world’s biggest advertising platforms to reach potential customers. 

Google announced that it will partially revoke the ban in September 2018, allowing crypto ads on regulated crypto exchanges in the US and Japan.

In 2019, Facebook reversed its decision, saying that ads will go only through a review; pre-approval for ads related to crypto and blockchain will not be required. 

The ads ban on Twitter was not revoked, but it will allow ads only if the advertising done by a public company that is listed on the stock exchange. More claimants who were adversely hurt by the crypto ad bans are expected by the law firm to join the lawsuit. 

Funding for the case is organized by JPB Liberty from venture capital firms, institutional litigation funders, and investors. If the lawsuit is successful, claimants are expected to get 70 percent of any settlement while the funders will receive 30 percent.  

On July 15, the most prominent personal twitter accounts of famous users, crypto exchanges, and tech companies simultaneously hacked by scammers to steer followers to send crypto.

The dozens of the biggest names including Joseph R. Biden Jr., Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kanye West, and Elon Musk posted similar messages on Twitter: Send Bitcoin and the famous people would send back double your money. 

Many of the scam tweets were quickly removed by twitter, but some accounts sent similar tweets again, suggesting that Twitter was powerless for regaining control.

Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey said,

“Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”

This twitter hack made the users send Bitcoin to the Bitcoin wallets promoted in the tweets. The wallets had received over $100k worth of Bitcoin from over 300 transactions, according to the website that tracks the Bitcoin public ledger.

The hackers were asking only for the Bitcoin, they didn’t use their access to aim at any important institutions or infrastructure. Officials noted that the breach didn’t affect the account of President Trump. His account was now under special security. 

Twitter has also fallen victim to breaches on Mr.Dorsey’s account in August 2019, hackers transferred his phone number to a new Sim card which stores a phone’s number, which is called SIM-swapping, allowing the hackers to tweet from his account. In 2017, a rogue worker used their access to Twitter’s systems to briefly delete President Trump’s Twitter account. The account was restored within minutes.