It Begins: Bank Now Threatening To Close Accounts If Customers Use Coinbase
Cryptocurrency user Jordan Spencer recently received a letter from his bank warning him that his account would be closed if he continued to buy and sell cryptocurrency through the popular website and app Coinbase. The bank, Lakestone Bank and Trust also ominously threatened to keep an eye on his account to make sure that he obeyed.
Spencer posted the letter in a Facebook group for Ethereum traders to warn others about possible penalties or sanctions from banks.
The letter stated that:
“We are happy to have you as a Lakestone Bank and Trust customer and would like to fulfill your banking needs, but it has come to my attention that you are making purchases and receiving funds from Coinbase.com – A type of business transaction that is against Lakestone’s policies and will need to be discontinued immediately. We will continue to monitor your account and if we see that these types of transactions continue we will be forced to take other action, up to and including closing the account.”
The post quickly went viral and created an uproar among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, who quickly spammed the bank’s Facebook page with negative reviews and comments.
Cryptocurrency is obviously a threat to the traditional financial system, with a market cap of over $600 billion and rising every day, which far exceeds that of most major banks.
It was reported this week that daily cryptocurrency markets are now doing the same volume as the New York Stock Exchange.
This is content that I created for a website that I write for called The Free Thought Project:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/bank-threatens-close-accounts-coinbase/
(sources for article are hyperlinked at the site above)
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Wow, crazy.
The biggest point of friction right now in the space is exchanging fiat into crypto and vice versa. It's a big problem.
It may be difficult to see past the initial outrage, at this response, of the bank's acknowledgement of it's surveillance practices, to grasp that such surveillance is being undertaken.
The fact that the threat baldly admits such, possibly illegal, insider trading surveillance techniques, shows just how fragile the extant financial system is.
Believe it or not, this is a great victory against the fractional reserve banking system. They are crumbling, and this letter is proof. It is further proof that we need them gone - free people cannot prosper subject to predatory systems that control all financial transactions.
We are eliminating that ubiquitous control, and this letter is an admission of not only their predatory surveillance and insider trading, but that they are losing the ability to prey on us, despite centuries, even millenia, spent honing that craft and constructing mechanisms designed to funnel every satoshi of profit into their wallets, from our work.
'First they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.' -- somebody said something much like this already.
We are halfway to winning already.
I'd recommend a class-action lawsuit against the bank by customers whose transactions are apparently being mined for business information that is demonstrably being used by the bank to inform it's business endeavors; classic insider trading.
-likes on facebook fall far short of protecting the victims of this criminal abuse of the confidentiality requisite to handling the private financial affairs of the bank's customers. It's time to twist the knife that is clearly already penetrating the corrupt, black heart of these predators. It is a mercy to end their suffering as swiftly as possible.
Thanks!
I agree with you completely on this @valued-customer.
This letter is an admission of the threat they face. It is against the policies of the bank because they realize that the purchase and utilization of crypto is a threat to the bank. The banksters are a lot of things, completely stupid is not one of them. They see the foundation of their money making-empire and humanity controlling fiat based mechanism collapsing. What really gets them is there is nothing they can do about it. They are completely powerless against the blockchain or the app called crypto.
There is a new game in town and they werent invited.
Do yourself a favor and get your money out of these shady banks. Their lose lol they need money to make money.
Absolutely right! Go and take all your money now from the banks and buy more cryptos...
How many DUI's kill people compared to crypto? If banks want to start telling us what to do with our own money they could at least do things like cut off transactions at bars or liquor stores and pretend they care about health and well being a tad. One day perhaps its coming, at least until self driving cars.
Trying to buy crypto with my bank I had no problems, I then tried cards 3 of them with credit to see and most of them were flagged for fraud activity as they did for like Alibaba china website transactions. All I needed to do was call or go to that site to confirm the transactions are legit and approved, and it worked again. Not sure if this particular bank is a small one like a credit union but my banks are military kind of banks and it didn't cause any normal problems (yet), that wasn't in my own best safety. I appreciate the fraud alerts, and would never complain unless it was unfixable.
To cut off someone's banking over this is either a sign of a threat, or miseducation of it being a scam, however this never stops banks of giving money to telemarketers for let's say microsoft scams or other parties like too many transactions from xbox if kid got your card. Shady business practices indeed, where it is either too much monitoring or not enough, sad. I'm happy with my banks however, he should just switch and let this bank rejecting him go out of business.
I would be at the bank first thing in the morning to close out my account and make sure the manager knew why. I've had enough of bankers telling me what to do with my money. Resteemed.
Manor we shall merit by chief wound no or would.
this sounds extremely ridiculous. Why does the bank have any rights to dictate who we do business with? It's pretty much like BP saying, "Hey we'll stop selling petrol to you because you drive a Toyota Corolla. Unless you stop driving your Toyota Corolla and drive a gas guzzling Mustang, we'll terminate any relationship with you as a customer."
Seriously, how f*** up can banks get?
thanks for shearing
WOW: "daily cryptocurrency markets are now doing the same volume as the New York Stock Exchange" I can see why the banks are getting a bit nervous. LOL Don't you just LOVE IT?
The banksters are on full attack mode right now. But like Jeff Berwick said "Bitcoin is the honeybadger of money... Bitcoin don't care."