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Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

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Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#271

Post by bootlooped »

rglover wrote: post #140
bootlooped wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why having a different settlement layer would prevent the bank from freezing money that they have custody of.

It removes the bank from the equation. The point here being that you keep some of your funds in Bitcoin so that, in the event you have to deal with something like this, you can still find a means to get people paid. Long-term, if everyone does larger transactions in Bitcoin (e.g., payroll, invoice payments, etc), then problems like this never occur.

Then we're not just talking about a settlement layer, right? We're talking about holding crypto instead of cash, and self custody.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#272

Post by galaxyLogic »

criddell wrote: post #107
galaxyLogic wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyer would be great but it may be that you have agreed to a contract which says you cannot sue them, only arbitration.

Arbitration isn't necessarily a bad thing. And you probably still want to have a lawyer involved.

I don't know much about arbitration but I assume it cannot be a good thing if you don't have the right to sue any more.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#273

Post by galaxyLogic »

ianhawes wrote: post #215
galaxyLogic wrote: post #90

Consider also that you probably could not sue your Bank if you wanted to. All the small print you agreed to. This was brought to my awareness due to the recent news about how somebody could not sue Disney because they had opened a Disney+ streaming account. We need financial reform customer protections. Let us hope the party that fights for big businesses and billionaires does not win in the next election.

Ugh, that lawsuit is the new McDonalds hot coffee. Front line lawyers at megacorps will respond with anything and their argument about arbitration because of Disney+ (they also claimed arbitration because the plaintiff did in fact also buy a park ticket on their website) was withdrawn shortly after the media shitstorm.

Thank God for the media

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#274

Post by galaxyLogic »

dehrmann wrote: post #236
galaxyLogic wrote: post #90

Consider also that you probably could not sue your Bank if you wanted to. All the small print you agreed to. This was brought to my awareness due to the recent news about how somebody could not sue Disney because they had opened a Disney+ streaming account. We need financial reform customer protections. Let us hope the party that fights for big businesses and billionaires does not win in the next election.

That doesn't mean the arbitrator would have agreed with the bank.

Right, but there must be a reason why the Bank put that clause into the fine print. It must be beneficial to them, I assume, else they would not have included that clause right?

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#275

Post by commercialnix »

lisper wrote: post #220
commercialnix wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and one which had a data breach less than a year ago Did not impact the viability of the hardware product at all.

Maybe. How can you be sure the attackers didn't insert a backdoor into Ledger's source repo?

The more important thing is that I don't have to be. Multi-Sig is still far less risky, complicated, and/or costly than the capriciousness or really -- let's just call it what it is -- outright criminality of fiat institutions. Some could try to explain behavior of fiat institutions as incompetence, but then we're just back at criminally stupid (courts are consistently clear that negligence is a form of criminality).

By professional crypto groups and smart users, for high dollar accounts Multi-Sig with hardware wallets from diverse vendors are used. None of them are by Ledger, because Ledger's firmware is closed source.

For Ledger specifically, I already do not trust Ledger.

Trezor is fine.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#276

Post by throwaway2037 »

developerDan wrote: post #264
throwaway2037 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all of the complaining about banking majors in the US here on HN, why don't more people bank _intentionally_ with credit unions, or at least local banks? When you open your account, make sure that the branch manager knows who you are and what your pattern of business will be. Open your account wearing good clothes (suit, if possible), and share a business card with your account rep and branch manager. Think old s…

> why don't more people bank _intentionally_ with credit unions, or at least local banks Simply put, national access to those banks. Traveling business owners who deal with cash will have access to physical banking locations all over the country. You cannot deposit cash in San Francisco for a bank that is local to only NYC.

    > Traveling business owners who deal with cash
Woah, you picked a strange edge case. What legitimate businesses in 2024 fit this category? I'm pretty sure that you can deposit cash at any ATM if that ATM and your card have either "Cirrus" or "Plus" interbank network compatibility.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#277

Post by neilv »

jxnlco wrote: post #233
serial_dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It assumes you know which one was first, the chicken or the egg. One option is that the author found/got a referral deal with an alternative provider, so thought they could write this article complaining about a competitor. Or... They were so pissed with Chase due to this nightmare they had to go through, they looked for alternatives, found something, so they mentioned it in the post. Disregarding is fine as you don'…

after my money was withheld i messaged a mercury investor to see if i could get set up asap, they set me up so i could get paid and reroute all my payroll.

I think online is so saturated with disingenuous influencers, that we've gotten acclimated to a lot of conflict of interest behavior, so it doesn't jump out at as as a potential problem.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#278

Post by choilive »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #260
benzible wrote: post #9

About 10 years ago a startup I co-founded had about $3M in a Chase account. We received a notification that they were closing our account within 30 days. We weren't able to get any information but I assume this was a KYC false positive. The only thing I can think of is that we had some investors from the Middle East. We had no problem withdrawing our funds but since then, I've opened another business account and a pe…

> I've opened another business account and a personal travel credit card with Chase, both of which were shut down within weeks This pattern repeats itself frequently here on HN. My questions / advice are always the same. Did you send written letters to Chase to ask for an explanation? In parallel, CC the same letter (yeah, by snail mail, and tell Chase you are doing it) to your local and national banking regulators.…

Yep, they definitely wont give a reason. They just say that the risk/compliance team has made the determination and it is final. shrug

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#279

Post by throw101010 »

lisper wrote: post #269
throw101010 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe for you. Not for everyone. Hence why everything tends to be public and open source for Bitcoin, so anyone who is conscientious and capable *can* do this. Trustlessness is a scale, not a binary. It just so happens that in traditional banking you start at the very bottom of the scale and you pretty much stay there. With Bitcoin you get about as high as you can get on this scale for a form of money. > That's a s…

> anyone who is conscientious and capable can do this Anyone who is conscientious and capable can navigate the traditional banking system too. In fact, that's pretty much what "capable" means . > in traditional banking you start at the very bottom of the scale and you pretty much stay there You don't have to any more than you have to with bitcoin. You can even start your own bank, and then you can keep your deposits…

> Anyone who is conscientious and capable can navigate the traditional banking system too. In fact, that's pretty much what "capable" means.

This is a funny contrast, under the article above... and the thousands of similar horror stories with centralized custodians ignoring their "customer" and never being held accountable for their shortcomings.

It seems to be more than being capable when it comes to banking, it might just be that you need to be rich/powerful enough for the banks to actually care. Another difference with Bitcoin, the same access is provided to anyone. The almost 2 billions of unbanked people on this planet are not this way because banks can't reach them, but because they are seen as liabilities/risks they don't want... Bitcoin does not make such discrimination.

> You can even start your own bank, and then you can keep your deposits there and you will have a 100% guarantee that your bank will not screw you.

I do not understand how this is supposed to address my point about trustlessness on a scale. You don't describe a system as Bitcoin by holding you own deposits... it is a full system for transfers/payments/messaging. It seems like a diversion to not address the fact that the trust put in custodian is not comparable to a system based on self-custody and self-sovereignty like Bitcoin.

> But that has nothing to do with control,

It absolutely does for Bitcoin. Nobody is following the chain that changes the emission rate and supply cap. This is control by the participants of the network, and it isn't limited to miners, we have seen users and other economical actors signify this to miners when there was an attempt to fork to larger blocks. Please show me how you can make such choices with fiat, the end users have generally no direct say on the policies of their money's central bank.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#280

Post by eadler »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #272
criddell wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitration isn't necessarily a bad thing. And you probably still want to have a lawyer involved.

I don't know much about arbitration but I assume it cannot be a good thing if you don't have the right to sue any more.

pre-dispute arbitration agreements are bad.

https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/

there are some very few aspects that can be positives under some conditions (speed, informality, etc.), it is almost certainly outweighed by the negatives.

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