YouTube Terminates Educational Crypto Channels

YouTube has suspended the accounts of three high-profile channels with educational content about crypto assets. So far, only the Bankless DAO channel has been reinstated.

🚨🚨🚨
The Bankless @YouTube account 'has been terminated'
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No warning.
No notification.
No justification

150,000 subs
10,000+ hours of content

Hey @YouTube, our community would like a word!

RETWEET to let YouTube hear you: It’s not okay to ban crypto content pic.twitter.com/MJQ4MGwtYD

— Bankless (@Bankless) May 8, 2022

At least three channels affected

The largest of the three accounts that were terminated was the official Bankless DAO channel with over 150,000 followers. According to Bankless, there was no prior warning and YouTube did not justify the suspension. Bankless founder Ryan Sean Adams comments that this demonstrates the need for uncensorable web3 content platforms:

YouTube has helped us teach thousands of people to use crypto and go bankless. This has always been a political movement for freedom. Today YouTube shut us down. They can deplatform you any time for any reason and they don’t have to tell you why.

The other two channels that were taken down belong to Gabriel Haines and the Optimism Foundation. It is unknown whether other channels were affected by YouTube’s latest ban wave as well.

Bankless YouTube channel is back 

Due to a public complaint on Twitter, which received over 6,000 retweets, Bankless was able to get their channel back online. YouTube responded with an apology for the incident after reinstating the account:

Confirming @BanklessHQ channel is back up, we’re so sorry this happened. looking into the other channels you mentioned in your other tweet, thanks so much for bearing with us.

Via Twitter, Bankless thanked YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki for reversing the ban and invited her over to join a podcast session, not without remarking that “sometimes it feels like crypto is being targeted, and the crypto community is left wondering why”, though. At the time of writing, Gabriel Haines and Optimism are still waiting to get their account back.