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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#281

Post by krupan »

acdha wrote: post #240
krupan wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't hard to accept money on an address that is known to be associated with you and then transfer it to an address that is not known (cannot be proven) to be associated with you. An extreme form of this is called coin mixing or coin joining, but for most of us, I would think, that level of address obfuscation will not ever be necessary. Or if it is then you can imagine it will be automated.

Think about what that means: people are expected to maintain multiple accounts, pay people to launder money between accounts, and never make a mistake, or fail to predict what financial activity today will become a problem later (did you donate to Planned Parenthood when Roe was the law of the land? Better figure out how to remove that from the blockchain before your employer transfers your job out of a free state. O…

You are overstating how easy it is to track and how hard it is manage multiple addresses. As more addresses are used it gets harder and harder to track. Your employer will not have the resources to do it. Hierarchical wallets make it really easy to use and keep track of multiple addresses today, and more privacy schemes are in progress, see: https://river.com/learn/what-are-schnorr-signatures/

It's true that it is not completely anonymous, but it is a huge improvement over the current system we are discussing here. Add that to the other benefits Bitcoin has and I still feel like it's a huge win.

Here's also a flip side benefit to the public ledger. Businesses can, if they choose, cryptographically prove that they have the funds they say they have. Think of the value of that

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#282

Post by matheusmoreira »

jdiff wrote: post #116
constantly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit

Crypto has been a scam from the beginning, the only thing that's changed is the public perception after NFTs bombed massively and crypto was once again left without any use case.

Huh? I've gotten paid for services in XMR. It already works. Even banks see the benefits of Ethereum.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#283

Post by BirAdam »

MrVandemar wrote: post #187
nickff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is the prime culprit when it comes to financially de-platforming people, if you want more secure access to banking, the solution is lighter regulation of banks, not more. Anti-money-laundering (AML) and so-called risk management regulations make it unprofitable and complicated to provided a mount services to many people. The government (and its regulatory bodies) use this ‘flexibility’ to achieve their…

> the solution is lighter regulation of banks, Seriously? Nope. Nope. Nope. No. Remember 2008.

One could argue that mortgages given out sub 2.5% became a problem when the fed funds rate went to 2.5% by mid-June. Additionally, a US deregulation wouldn’t explain house bubbles elsewhere at the same time. The truth is that when interest rates are low, debt is more attractive but when/if rates rise, many borrowers and lenders will suffer. This became especially problematic when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to compete very strongly with government money and gain massive swaths of the market. The other lenders were then pushed into rather unsafe behavior. Thing is, how do you regulate subprime lending? If the answer is just to refuse the “dirty poors” you’ll eventually have an extremely angry and desperate underclass, hence the creation of Fannie and Freddie in the first place. If you outlaw derivative markets you’ll be outlawing an avenue for legitimate hedging, and you’d end up with even greater consolidation of many markets into the hands of even fewer participants. While deregulation did directly lead to the consolidation of the banking system after the crisis, and certainly didn’t help prevent the crisis, I wouldn’t consider it a primary cause.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#284

Post by astrange »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #104
astrange wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin absolutely does not have the privacy of cash! It is cash like in that if you typo the destination address you instantly lose all the money, which is sort of like how you can accidentally set cash on fire.

you kinda just proved his point about shutting down intelligent conversation

You shouldn't have intelligent conversations with crypto people any more than any other kind of scammer. They're going to pickpocket you while you do it.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#285

Post by [deleted] »

lxm wrote: post #144
XorNot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

> guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services That alone exceeds the requirement of “minimal” as there’s now a need to hire staff for fraud monitoring, handle disputed transactions, chase fraudulent transfers, deal with those who forgot their passwords to electronic banking, had their passwords stolen, etc. What are the new revenue channels that will pay for all that extra staff (and considering it’s US…

[deleted]

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#286

Post by astrange »

krupan wrote: post #139
dale_glass wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Bitcoins are trackable on the blockchain, and these days you won't go far before transactions can be connected to an identifiable wallet. If you've ever said anything like "Donations accepted at $ADDRESS", then everyone can see if anyone ever sent anything, and from there it doesn't take much work to see if you ever spent that money on anything and what else you do with it. You can obscure things some, but the re…

People do track cash by serial number, each and every bill has a unique one. However in practice it doesn't happen a lot. I would think that's because: - There are a whole lot of bills to keep track of - The serial numbers are not easily stored and compared with computers (at least not for private individuals) That second point, bills not being on computers, is why cash isn't the easy answer to the banking problems w…

> It is, however, somewhat possible to track Bitcoin going too and from the addresses because it is all on computers and this is a trade off of Bitcoin being permission-less and not controlled by a single entity that can decide to unbank you, and online so that you can send it to people across the country.

It's not "somewhat" possible, it's 100% possible because the history is public and permanent. If you make a mistake once in your entire life Chainalysis will see through anything you previously did to obscure a transaction.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#287

Post by Tao3300 »

x-complexity wrote: post #230
zb3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can I pay my bills with bitcoin while being debanked?

> How can I pay my bills with bitcoin while being debanked? Acting as an alternative to krupan's Bitcoin-centric answer: - There are other crypto rails other than Bitcoin that could be used in its place. USDC & stablecoins in general is going to be the medium-term winners in this space, as more services are set up to help people pay their bills with stablecoins. Here are 2 services that I've found within a few minute…

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#288

Post by throwaway346434 »

WalterBright wrote: post #271
1letterunixname wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gamed" by whom? Do you assume poor people are all lazy, undeserving, criminal, and cheating? Have you ever accompanied a poor or disabled person to a county assistance office to see what the forms or process entails? Do you know how SNAP or WIC works?

> all I never said "all". Some years back, and acquaintance of mine detailed how he gamed the system. He'd work until he met the minimum number of employed weeks to qualify for unemployment, then he'd do a lousy job so he'd get laid off. He'd then go on unemployment. Being unemployed required him to look for a job, so he'd look for a job, and flunk the job interview. When the unemployment compensation ran out, then h…

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/from-mothers-pensio...

"For every 10,000 households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), about 14 contained a recipient who was investigated and determined to have committed fraud (via a 2018 report by the Congressional Research Service). Within SNAP, for every $10,000 paid in benefits, about $11 is determined by state agencies to have been overpaid due to recipient fraud.

To put this into perspective, the IRS estimates that for every $6 owed in federal taxes, $1 is not paid because of tax evasion or fraud."

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#289

Post by mapt »

WalterBright wrote: post #271
1letterunixname wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gamed" by whom? Do you assume poor people are all lazy, undeserving, criminal, and cheating? Have you ever accompanied a poor or disabled person to a county assistance office to see what the forms or process entails? Do you know how SNAP or WIC works?

> all I never said "all". Some years back, and acquaintance of mine detailed how he gamed the system. He'd work until he met the minimum number of employed weeks to qualify for unemployment, then he'd do a lousy job so he'd get laid off. He'd then go on unemployment. Being unemployed required him to look for a job, so he'd look for a job, and flunk the job interview. When the unemployment compensation ran out, then h…

My first instinct was to post a detailed takedown, and I started to go into Washington State's unemployment system eligibility and benefit criteria... but on reflection I don't think most of those things you just told us actually happened. There is a history of anti-welfare activists lying about the facts they have observed and those lies forming immortal zombie collective memories. Numerous examples in Reagan speeches are still repeated as fact today despite being debunked in the 80's, repeated as part of a consensus conventional wisdom by both political parties. So why bother?

If you'd like to sanity-check your recollections, try to figure out what the people in question would be eligible for, and try to figure out what it would actually cost to live in Seattle.

I will point out the number of politicians who were shocked, shocked when they went to backdoor COVID relief through the unemployment system, and found that most state systems were deliberately neglected to the point of abject dysfunction, or had erected punitive gating systems that defeated most applicants.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#290

Post by Tao3300 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #260
phpisthebest wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just follow any Conservative, Christian, or Gun group and you will see stories of Chase closing accounts for political reasons, Chase is will known for this in many political circles

What sort of “political reasons”?

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