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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

#861

Post by BobaFloutist »

krupan wrote: post #212
dclowd9901 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a legitimate, non-criminal reason to launder money?

Again, how exactly do you define money laundering? Currently the definition by law seems to be, "anything that could be used to hide criminal activity." In that case, yes, there are plenty of legitimate, non-criminal reasons to make transactions that "could be used" to hide criminal activity. Is privacy a crime?

I'm pretty sure money laundering at least requires intent.

Doing anything to intentionally avoid triggering scrutiny policies is a crime, even if you're not doing anything else wrong.

Unfortunately, we run into the same problems as DMCA where hugely powerful, essential corporations run into poorly crafted laws that don't function at scale, and small users that never did anything wrong get shafted.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#862

Post by BobaFloutist »

pas wrote: post #836
appalp wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> crazy anti-porn Nothing crazy about that. It's very harmful to women, and doesn't do the consumers of it much good either.

citation needed this has the same energy as "video games are making us killers", "tabletop RPGs directly lead to Satan (no chance of ever getting back)", "reefer madness, not even once", and so on. are there negative consequences with regards to women? sure, as with many things. is it "harmful to women"? oh, yes, maybe we need to put blinders on women and assign a guardian to them to help them avoid this harm!

It's at the least very weird that it's illegal to pay someone for sex unless you pay them to have sex with someone else, record it, and sell the resulting recording.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#863

Post by BobaFloutist »

eru wrote: post #516
quickthrower2 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean that sounds like stocks, which do exist, and people do use to pay other people.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#864

Post by 6510 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #743
phil21 wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we're at the "then they laugh at you?" stage of the game it seems? I guess that happened years ago and we are fully in the "and then they fight you" portion of the timeline.

I personally don't think so. I think there are very, very few people actually believing in real-world usage of cryptocurrencies. Most are in it for speculative reasons.

I was really interested in building things for bc really early on but the medium attracted nothing but pump and dump folk. The analogy would be to talk about growing your own food with people running mega farms.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#865

Post by e44858 »

cft wrote: post #10

Eventually more and more use cases for Bitcoin will emerge, as the government becomes less competent and more reckless with its fiat. It costs $35,000 for a reason.

Do anti-money-laundering laws apply to BitCoin? It would have the same problem because exchanges could share blacklists of high-risk wallet addresses.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#866

Post by kwere »

jgilias wrote: post #504
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #489

> According to Thomson Reuters, banks filed over 1.8 million SARs in 2022 > The algorithmically generated alerts are reviewed every day by human employees. At 1.8M reports either banks employ an army of reviewers or there is fuck all of a review. > or wire transfers with banks in high-risk countries. Sounds like something ripe for discrimination against immigrants.

It totally is discrimination. A friend of mine in an EU country had the experience where a client’s payment to his business rang all the alerts and was delayed by his bank for a month just because it came from an African country. Both totally legitimate businesses doing no shady stuff whatsoever. Try to explain to your employees how their salaries are delayed because your bank suspects you’re terrorists or something.…

banks literally operate in a fascist framework, the goverment control literally everything on how they can operate, usually under political logics above sound economics (paper growth by debt creation). By being a sector which consolidate naturally overtime in few conglomerates it becomes quite ripe to corruption and backdealings

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#867

Post by zlg_codes »

phpisthebest wrote: post #652
zlg_codes wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's inflation was caused by greedy market forces, collusion, and government loan fraud, by those same capitalists. Government spending on useful services, or helping their constituents get by on two one-time $600 payments did not create the current economic climate.

>>Government spending on useful services So you believe government only ever spends on Useful services? Some how I bet you can point to more than a few things government spends money on you disapprove of and consider to be less than useful >>helping their constituents get by on two one-time $600 payments did not create the current economic climate. Nice gas lighting, the reality is the 2 $600 payments make up somethi…

I'm gonna step past the conflation and other poor discussion to focus on the part I like in your post.

Things would have gone better if the PPP loan money was spent on keeping the working public solvent. People who weren't allowed to work shouldn't have been forced into unemployment, more or less, without adequate compensation.

But I also see the whole thing as evidence that our viral protocols and our ability to deliver clear, accurate information that won't be politicized, is essentially moot.

If it were rabies that was this airborne, we'd all be dead.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#868

Post by [deleted] »

raincom wrote: post #796
elzbardico wrote: post #779

Banks should close accounts for administrative reasons only, with ample notice period, and give full disclosure of the reason. Balance should be made available as soon as possible once the customer present an alternative account, or he should be able to get a check. For regulatory reasons, only the government should be able to mandate closure and for that it should be backed by a judicial order. I don't fucking care…

Two things: (a) Banks can be vague in their SAR filings with “transaction with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose” (b) What BSA manul says: "No bank, and no director, officer, employee, or agent of a bank that reports a suspicious transaction may notify any person involved in the transaction that the transaction has been reported." [1] This deadly combination is enough for banks to NOT disclose. That's…

[deleted]

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#869

Post by jurynulifcation »

psychlops wrote: post #851
jurynulifcation wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer protections. Until there are rigorous consumer protections, crypto is only fit for scams imo.

> Consumer protections. Those are covered by local laws. What protections do you think are missing from crypto that is different from other areas?

The ability to undo fraudulent charges and claw back illegitimately stolen funds.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#870

Post by TwoHeadedBeast »

rbanffy wrote: post #832
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrible. I've heard similar stories but this one's the worst by far. This shouldn't be allowed to ever happen again, such sudden closures without warning need to be illegal. The issue is banking is highly regulated but a lot of the regulation is about AML, terrorism screening and such. Not actually protecting customers from abuse but rather the other way around - banks are taking precautions to protect themselves fr…

> There is a solution - not sure if everyone's ready to hear it yet: Decentralized finance. Another good option is to have checking accounts in more than one bank. Whatever triggers bank A to close your account is unlikely to also trigger the same action by bank B. It requires more funds, but you decentralise your finances within the classic financial system. If something triggers a close of your accounts on multiple…

Really just a credit card with a different institution is enough to see you through something like this.
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