Mailchimp bans crypto content creators without notice

The largest email marketing platform Mailchimp continues to suspend the accounts of crypto content creators and media outlets.

Starting last week, platforms offering crypto news, content or related services have reported difficulty logging into their accounts, followed by notices of service interruptions. 

Prominent crypto companies who have been locked out of their accounts include edge wallet, a provider of self-custody crypto holding services, and Messari, a crypto research company. 

‘The Mailchimp account had been deactivated.’ tweeted Joelly Garcia, the Edge Wallet community manager. Garcia learned of her company’s Mailchimp account’s deactivation when she tried to log in.

‘Add @Ethereum Foundation’s @EF_ESP to the list of customers @Mailchimp has rugged. Anyone have good recommendations for email subscription services with solid API integrations? Or any that don’t pull the plug on paying customers without any notification or justification?” Sam Richards tweeted.  

On August 10, Messari founder Ryan Selkis announced that Mailchimp had suspended the firm’s account ‘for no reason.’

‘Thank you for deplatforming some of crypto's most reputable brands in the past 48 hours,’ Selkis tweeted at Mailchimp.

‘You're proving our point. Mailchimp—and all speech censors—must be destroyed.’

Marketing lead at Messari, Jared Ronis also weighed in, saying that the firm could not access its subscribers’ list either, adding that ‘I shiver to think of what enforcement looks like for actual nefarious actors.’

The suspension was also applied to crypto media outlet Decrypt, a Mailchimp user of over 4 years. 

Earlier this month, Mailchimp suspended NFT artist Ocarina from the platform after she tried to send a mail about an NFT drop to her subscribers.

Mailchimp stated the suspension was due to ‘content associated with your industry conflicts with our Acceptable Use Policy.’

According to Mailchimp’s Acceptable Use Policy adopted back in 2018, it does not provide its services to companies whose businesses are related to promoting ‘cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, and any digital assets related to an Initial Coin Offering.’

The policy also claims to allow reporting on cryptocurrency as long as the content does not promote it. 

The suspensions came months after Mailchimp’s parent company and tax software creator Intuit, was slammed with a class-action lawsuit for failure to protect Mailchimp’s data systems that resulted in phishing attacks on a customer of a cryptocurrency wallet company, Trezor, that saw him lose US$ 87K from his Trezor wallet. 

Mailchimp reasoned that it was addressing the phishing incident in a statement that was hosted on its website, which read:

‘From the outset, we acted swiftly to address the situation by limiting employee access to internal systems. Our findings show that this was a targeted incident focused on users in industries related to cryptocurrency and finance. All owners of impacted accounts have been notified.’ 

Photo: Getty