Officially announced today, Bank of America has "banned" Bitcoin. Along with BofA, Citigroup (CitiBank), and Chase Bank, have also stopped any type of transaction related to cryptocurrency. About a month ago, a Bank of America customer posted online about a "declined payment" for a purchase made on Coinbase. Bank of America C.E.O, Brian Moynihan publicly announced and gave warning that J.P Morgan and Bank of America were going to bar transactions related to cryptocurrency. Here is a quote from Moynihan: "We basically told people they could buy at other accounts, not at Merrill Lynch."But, here comes the irony: Bank of America applied for over TWENTY patents covering digital assets solutions to private and public blockchain concepts. Let that sink in for a minute.
The reasoning behind this bar was for the "best interest" of their customers: by preventing customers from "recklessly borrowing" to purchase cryptocurrency and prevent debt. Then they followed up with their reason for this action to "prevent untraceable criminal activity". I don't buy it, but, do you?
Leave your thoughts and comments below. Thank you for reading this article.
---Ledger
Bank of America Patent- http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=9,836,790.PN.&OS=pn/9,836,790&RS=PN/9,836,790
Bank of America Ban- http://news.bitcoin.com/bank-america-becomes-latest-credit-card-issuer-ban-bitcoin/
Bank of America Warning - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/cramer-investors-should-heed-bank-of-americas-warning-on-bitcoin.html
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BoA and other banks did not ban Bitcoin. They have no regulatory oversight to ban. They did, however, stop allowing people to buy cryptocurrencies on credit (meaning loans and credit card purchases).
Also, checking out the articles you linked, the closest thing to "banning" is that they no longer allow their on-staff financial advisors to buy Bitcoin on behalf of their clients: "the company banned financial advisors from buying bitcoin-related investments for their clients."
At the end of the day, it's not in a bank's interest for their money to be leveraged to buy crypto-currencies, so of course, they're going to limit that as much as they can within their customer's accounts and terms of agreements, but the banks cannot ban consumers from buying with our own money. Only the government can regulate that!
Thank you for your feedback. The word "ban" means to forbid something from happening. BofA along with other Credit Card companies have stopped transactions to purchase cryptocurrency (meaning they forbid it from happening which they have every right to do). I explain that in the second sentence of my article. You also pointed out the interest of the Financial Institution, which I quote in the Banks own words. So thank you for your interpretation and rewording of that paragraph. Also, having been a customer of BofA I can assure you they are fully capable of closing ANY account for ANY reason without government consent or regulation. Best of wishes to you and your sister blog. I listen to the People and that is why I am here. I am not here to spread FUD, just here to inform and state facts, which I feel I have done. Thank you again for your comment.
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