What’s Up With Australian Banks and Bitcoin?
On Saturday the Sydney Morning Herald published an article that bitcoin and crypto investors in Australia were having their accounts frozen for crypto activities.
The offenders, the big four banks in Australia: National Australia Bank, ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Westpac Banking Corporation.
So what’s going on with bitcoin in Australia?
Recently, complaints about frozen accounts and blocked transactions have crypto enthusiasts concerned in Australia as the rest of the world watches closely.
The news has impacted the major crypto exchanges CoinJar, Coinbase, CoinSpot, and BTC Markets. CoinSpot even suspended AUD deposits through the first week of January as it tries to work things out with the banks.
Popular Australian bitcoin Youtuber Alex Saunder’s of Nugget’s News Austraila spoke about it recently. You can check out his video below.
I’m guessing this has to do with the Australian government’s recent approval of Austrac (the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) to monitor bitcoin exchanges.
So it looks like the exchanges and crypto traders are in the process of getting compliant. Reminds of my Bittrex situation, which I wrote about here and here, where my funds were frozen over six weeks until the paperwork was sorted out. Not fun!
Any Aussie crypto traders out there? What’s the word on the street?
Well I just signed up for KuCoin exchange today. Very easy to sign up and at this time no ID verification. You can also add 2FA. I like my privacy, so this site seems to work for me so far. I'll probably start avoiding Bittrex if I can as well as coinbase.
On my list to check out KuCoin, send me a referral link if they do that.
I did check out the coin KCS... interesting but BNB is a better value imo.
Here is the referral...https://www.kucoin.com/#/?r=1sb3J
BNB is great, I hold them as well, but it is always good to be diversified. KCS is a bit newer, so the volume isn't there yet, but what is nice, is if you hold the KCS coin on the exchange (similar to BNB) you get rewarded with a little bit of each coin that is traded on the site. This means you can gain value if KCS goes up, as well as if any of the coins go up. Once I heard that, I decided that I wanted in. Plus, it is very fast to create an account. I created mine in seconds...no need to wait for verification. I will be using both KuCoin and Binance for my trading. Best of luck to you...and Happy New Year.
Well that is interesting. COSS does the same thing, not a lot of volume at this point though.
I'll be checking out KuCoin soon, thanks for the link!
I may have to look into COSS. Always good to diversify. Do you have any COSS?
Lol, yes. I generally buy first and ask questions later ;-p
Do we know of any banks or credit unions that want our business?
Do any have a stated policy in support of crypto exchanges?
This is the big question and I've posed it elsewhere too. Once we figure out who wants our business we need to get the word out.
I don't know but I'm sure someone is working on it right now.
I've noticed that PoliPay has been disabled on BTCMarkets (largest Australian exchange) for a few weeks now. My guess is that the government is just regulating crypto for tax purposes.
That sounds about right... with the big move there's a lot more taxes to collect too.
bitcoin is most important cryptocurrency...
i love bitcoin
me too!
Well it could be that there something really going on with Bitcoin in Austrslia
That's the concern... is just getting KYC in order or something bigger???
Australia has been pretty bitcoin friendly so I'm hoping it's not something bigger.
Well the government are good at hiding secrets that's the more reason it's seems worrisome
Only time will tell...
It seems the elite are feeling the pinch that is what's happening
Banks starting to fear the bitcoin... this will be fun to watch!
Very interesting article.
bitcoin is amazing cryptocurrencry.
I like to mine bitcoin.
Mining bitcoin a great activity and very rewarding!
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@reewy
Sounds good, cheers!
This is a great,
I upvoted you as a witness :) good luck!
Thank you!
welcome sir.
bitcoin is always great....thanks for the post....
Agreed!