First of all great read, informative and interesting stuff. I wouldn't come across this without Steemit! So thank you @techslut !
Now for some of my two-sense.... or is it cents? Cheers!
"With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it. There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services. This will be a serious year of self-improvement and I'm looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together." - Mark Zuckerberg
To me, from a tech journalist's perspective, Mark Zuckerberg's duality toward cryptocurrencies and decentralization is interesting. Because it is the centralization of power in the social media and online advertising market that gives The Zuck the ability to censor cryptocurrency related ads with the click of a button. Not only that, but the fact that Zuck's post revealed his interest in both less than a MONTH before dropping the bomb on all crypto-related business advertising on his platform? Just goes to show how little connection there is between what Facebook says and what Facebook does.
After reading both Zuckerberg's quote on top and yours following. It seems that maybe his further review and "study of the positive and negative aspects" of crypto has led FB to determine it's in their best initial interest to ban "all crypto-related business advertising on his platform," as you mention above.
As several replies above mention, I'd agree that initially it's probably better to distance themselves from cryptos due to there being so many out there and their credibility being questionable.
I also questioned why FB hasn't made a coin yet and/or whether they themselves were developing one. Without much thought, it would seem that it is a no-brainer for them. If not in the hopes of monetary gain -as they at the current moment are not lacking in that department- but for them to be ahead of the curve when blockchain becomes something more mainstream. Which it is almost inevitably is going to become, in my humble and still learning opinon.