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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

#511

Post by nicbou »

Ajay-p wrote: post #58

Debanking is deeply unfair but more so in our society that is moving increasingly towards a cash-less society. A person can be debanked for no fault of their own and that causes them to be unable to pay rent, bills, etc. Like being arrested - there is little recourse without great expense or effort.

My job is to help immigrants settle in Germany. This is a serious issue for a lot of immigrants.

The documents they need to open a bank account (plastic residence permit, address registration certificate) are not available to them, sometimes for up to a year.

The ways around it are poorly documented and change often as German banks tighten their KYC requirements.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#512

Post by jesterson »

krupan wrote: post #70

The crazy thing to me in all this is that the types and amounts of transactions you make with your money and the bank is not criminal and never could be. It could however be a technique used to hide things that are criminal like fraud or theft. Somehow somewhere along the way we as a society decided we were ok with criminalizing the types of transactions that can be used to hide crime. That to me should have been a c…

> The crazy thing to me in all this is that the types and amounts of transactions you make with your money and the bank is not criminal and never could be.

Nothing crazy about it. All those KYCs, checks and check on checks have nothing to do with money laundering or any other sort of illegal activity but it has to do with control over YOUR money.

Notice how extremely regulated the industry is? So multi-billion dollar scam ventures just can't exist under this pressure, right? Multi billion dollar dodgy deals with money laundering? They should have disappeared if my $500 txn gets so much attention, right?

Wrong - it's blossoming. One may ask how - and the answer is on the surface and it has nothing to do with money laundering.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#513

Post by tinus_hn »

pauldenton wrote: post #499
maccard wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least in the UK, NatWest debanked Neil Farage's account for his political views. Even its CEO resigned over her lying. No, a subsidiary of NatWest closed Farage's account when he no longer met the investment thresholds for the account he held. The CEO resigned for telling a journalist the above. That's not the same thing, at all.

They resigned for telling a journalist that because it was a lie. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/britains-bbc-... Britain's BBC has apologised to Nigel Farage over a story it ran on the closure of his accounts at NatWest's (NWG.L) private bank Coutts, which the former Brexit Party leader had said was the result of his political views. The BBC had previously reported Farage falling below the financial…

Alternatively the facts were not defensible so they came up with an excuse that was.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#514

Post by orangepurple »

zb3 wrote: post #90
krupan wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a tip, stick with Bitcoin, not crypto.

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

You can't. Every US Dollar touch point is heavily regulated. Back in the day Local Bitcoins was the way to convert crypto to cash but now its highly regulated and they implemented enhanced anti money laundering controls.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#515

Post by orangepurple »

rossrubacon wrote: post #337
zb3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://bylls.com/ if your in canada

Anything with KYC puts you at risk of being de-banked. And every payment processor requires KYC.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#516

Post by eru »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #445
eru wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would be good if we deregulated, so that banking wasn't special. Private companies should be allowed to print private notes. (Of course, with distinctive designs etc. We don't want anyone fooled into mixing them up.)

This would be a more “old fashioned” monetary system. Problem is people getting ripped off or rugpulled. Especially as there is no gold standard so you would presumably back these by some asset for example this note is worth 1% of our fleet cars or something.

> Especially as there is no gold standard so you would presumably back these by some asset for example this note is worth 1% of our fleet cars or something.

I would expect private issuers in eg the US to denominate their notes in USD. Or if USD were to abolished tomorrow, they would probably denominate in Euro. Failing that, I would expect a return to denomination in gold before denomination in car fleets.

Backing is a different issue. Walmart could denominate their notes in gold, but back them with the strength of their overall balance sheet and operations. Just like banks today denominate the contents of your bank account in USD, but back them with their balance sheets. (And have only a small fraction of their assets in USD reserves at the Fed or vault cash.)

> Problem is people getting ripped off or rugpulled.

That wasn't much of a problem historically.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#517

Post by prmoustache »

zlg_codes wrote: post #448
zdragnar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're still an American citizen, don't you technically still owe US to taxes on that "salary"? And since you're paying it as salary, I'm not sure that you're able to deduct any of the fees as expenses from what's owed.

Why is America the only country that taxes people who have citizenship but aren't residents? The only one, guys.

Because people in the us hate taxes and their purposes and thus don't tax the residents enough?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#518

Post by neonsunset »

ArabicBaklava wrote: post #494
ArabicBaklava wrote: post #481

Bank of america did this to me, in the same weekend i was moving out. All my stuff was in the car, it was a friday at 3PM and i was in the gas station. I couldn't fill up my gas. Called and they told me to come to the bank with two forms of ID. When I arrived to the bank the fraud department was operating in NY (3hrs ahead) and they were closing, so they told me to come next tuesday (it was a long weekend). I went ho…

Well, this happened in 2017.. fast forward to this account closure effect on my life: I had to go back to my country, without a degree, was not able to land any job. Unfortunately, good places require degrees. Stayed unemployed, hit with chronic depression as anyone would. Lost 4+ years of professional progress. When covid came, i was able to complete my degree online and graduated in 2021, but because all fresh grad…

I wonder if the bank can be sued for this. That's how random bank managers get found in a river, due to policies like these impacting the innocent.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#519

Post by pabs3 »

panarky wrote: post #265
raincom wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good that you trust Chase and other banks with the lame 'evidence' that they provide such as: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." Based on that standard template, I won't trust big banks, becaus…

None of this is about whether I trust Chase or not. It's about the big claim that Chase monitors the political activity of their customers and systematically closes the accounts of people with opinions Chase doesn't like. There's precisely zero evidence that they do this. Even if one blindly accepts your citations from "The 700 Club" and some random post from "Nitter" as authoritative, even they provide zero evidence…

FWIW, Nitter is just an alternative frontend to Twitter/X.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#520

Post by FatalLogic »

krupan wrote: post #335
hanniabu wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum trumps bitcoin in pretty much every metric except for market cap, which is lagging because bitcoin has the name brand, simpler for people to understand, and misinformation spread by bitcoin maxis and competing chains

How about metrics like answering the question of, "how much of the coin exists?" Or metrics like, "how understandable and simple is the overall protocol and mining scheme?" Or "has this chain ever broken it's own rules and rolled back transactions at the behest of its benevolent dictator?" Spoiler: Bitcoin wins on all of those. The market cap is better for a reason.

>"has this chain ever broken it's own rules and rolled back transactions at the behest of its benevolent dictator?"

Bitcoin has also done this.

You're referring to the $50m DAO smart contract bug (or "hack") early in 2016, when Ethereum had been running for about a year. The Ethereum blockchain was swiftly rolled back. This was achieved by the majority of Ethereum developers agreeing to create an update to Ethereum software that reversed the hackers transactions specifically, and the great majority of users and miners agreeing to use that updated software. The people behind the DAO were closely connected to the Ethereum developers. Some of them were Ethereum developers. Some of the people who lost money in the DAO were Ethereum developers.

What you're unaware of apparently, is that when Bitcoin had been running for about a year, in 2010, a bug allowed someone to create 184 billion Bitcoins. This effectively made everybody's Bitcoins worthless (or even more worthless!). This event was ALSO swiftly rolled back, just like the Ethereum DAO event, by the same consensus process that I described above.

"Core developers Gavin Andresen and Satoshi Nakamoto were on the case, and the 184 billion BTC transaction was purged from block 74638."

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-history-part-10-the-184-bil...

Since then, there have been various incidents involving Ethereum and Bitcoin and hacks or smart contract bugs that caused losses of millions or billions. But neither currency has ever done a roll back of this nature again.

For instance. A year or so after Ethereum's DAO debacle, there was another similar event, the Parity bug, which accidentally locked $230m in a smart contract, permanently. The people operating Parity were closely connected to the Ethereum developers, some of them were Ethereum developers. But this time, although the victims pleaded for a roll back, it was never seriously considered.

https://news.bitcoin.com/parity-calls-for-ethereum-hard-fork...

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