UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto | Hacker News Reader

UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

techmonitor.ai

47 pointsTT482128 comments

I first learned about blockchain years ago talking to some middle eastern clients who had implemented something with it. After looking at the technology from a data & software engineering pov, I thought it was basically useless and incredibly niche. I said as much, but they didnt believe me; they also thought ML was where you "fed data to a machine and it did everything" because that's what some lecturer had told them.

For years I was mostly just confused that "crypto" was anything at all, and latterly it seemed pretty clearly insane. The pitch to replace governement-back currencies with deflationary tokens clearly a fever dream of some political moron. Then it became very clear that it was just a scam: the dream was the hook. And "tokens" fit the collectables mould, in which assets with only ephemeral value to collectors boom in speculative bubbles.

Two years ago a friend wanted to get into the industry, and I said that soon it'll be a black mark on a CV and everyone will be hiding it.

What is interesting is that amongst professional finance much of this has been apparent the whole time. I've spoken to senior people in UK banking and they've confirmed as much. And as much is clear by reading the FT.

What is interesting is how much "elite tech" has captured the elite and silenced professional finance. The Economist article cited above, for example (and on HN the other day), was absurdly pro-crypto giving the scam-sales-pitch verbatim.

Some documentary is no doubt in the works on this, and I can see an Adam-Curtis style one on "how silicon valley beat the financial elites and captured the political imagination of a generation"

> I thought it was basically useless and incredibly niche

Quite, I tried on and off for years to imagine a single use case for the real world. Always came up dry because the Blockchain Oracle problem is unsolvable.

Most of the highly technical software engineers I've spoken to have felt similarly. Blockchain is a neat solution to some very niche problems. However, there seems to be a middle ground of perhaps less technical people (the tech bros) who are attracted by the easy money and don't think too deeply about the underlying technical realities.

I'm a tech guy, also trade, also teeter on end the fed vibes

There is value in being able to anonymously and stably transfer value uncensored.

But which state will stand aside while you realize this dream? Not a one.

> There is value in being able to anonymously and stably transfer value uncensored.

Let me know when this comes into existence, because it might be interesting.

It exists, Monero. But it isn't necessarily a stable value, though I think it will hit a stable value at some point.

For some reason, I can't post so here is my reply to the guy below me:

Current XMRUSD volatility is ~40%

Current USDJPY volatility is ~38%

I believe in due time, when the pump and dumpers are gone, it will become as stable as normal currency pairs.

It exists, but it doesnt exist yet.

I AM A billionaire! Well not necessarily yet, I only have 4 dollars and 53 cents, though I think it will hit that net worth level at some point in the future.

If you create your own cryptocurrency, give yourself a billion tokens and value it at $1/token you too can be a billionaire just like SBF

Current

the volatility of XMR-USD is currently 38.70%

the volatility of USD-JPY is currently 11.99%

Max Drawdown - XMR-USD -92.96% USD-JPY -20.48%

https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/XMR-USD/JPY...

Still the trend is less volatility not more. It will get there!

I was looking at monthly volatility for jpy. 3x the daily vol isn't bad at all.

Great link BTW.

A world without political control on the money supply is a vastly inferior one to either (1) no control; (2) automated control; or (3) control by gold miners.

(1) leads to great depressions (mass poverty, famine, etc.); (2) leads to feudalism; and (3) to colonialism, war and poverty.

Political control over the money supply is one of the most stabilising, peaceful and moral inventions of the 20th century.

For human history the poor have been destroyed by deflationary currency which was always better to bury than invest (see, for example, Jesus' story of the talents (coins) where he recommends burying rather than investing -- incomprehensible today, but sane with metal currency).

The trans-A slave trade was a more-or-less direct result of the massive inflation of the discovery of gold in the americas which made labour impossible to pay.

People discovering rocks in the ground is no basis on which to design a world-wide political system; and the origin of a vast amount of evil. Comparatively, central banks targeting 2% inflation is an unalloyed good.

By automated control leading to feudalism, I presume you mean deflation leads to feudalism?

I'm a fan of automated control, but with an algorithmically set inflation rate, I don't see why it would lead to feudalism.

No one controls inflation, the only variable under control is the cost for a bank to receive money from a central bank (an interest rate).

Any value of an interest rate is a political tradeoff: a low rate favours spending, a high rate favours saving. So a low rate promotes expansion and an excess of cash in the system; a high rate promotes contraction and a relative deficit of cash. No value for an interest rate is "correct", it is an ethical decision. And the effect of a given rate will depend on economic variables that are basically unmeasurable (eg., aggregate preference for future consumption at a given rate) and have to be determined by best-guess expert judgement.

What would an algorithm do? Who would create it? Who do you think would create it?

My view is that replacing any aspect of politics (, law, etc.) with "algorithms" has a pretty clear line to feudalism or similar. Political judgement should never be naively deterministic in a chaotic, unmeasurable and unmeasured world.

A deterministic "politics" makes its power structure eternal and immutable. Do we change the alg when the world changes? No, that's just status quo. We mean an alg that never changes regardless of the change to the world. It's mad.

I can see where you're going with this. An algorithmic approach without a political fallback can lead to feudalism because the people who control the algorithm, control everything.

This is why I teeter on "end the fed". You need an independent body not influenced by the politics, yet accountable for their performance in the end. I'm not sure they're currently accountable in a manner that matters.

Edit: when I say inflation in this context, I mean monetary inflation. That can be controlled.

Edit 2: I'm not really sure how the current system is that far from feudalism. They are literally talking about putting the plebs out of work so their (feudal overlords) cash isn't made worthless.

Any rate a central bank sets has winners and losers, with inflation at 10%, 90% of people are losing.

The fed is being the most "economically reasonable" of almost any central bank in the world right now. The UK central is afraid of matching the Fed because property owners would be screwed, and the UK economy is more dependent on real-estate. This is compounded by Brexit (a project of those property owners) which is driving import inflation that the central bank is also ignoring.

So I, as a pro-EU UK renter, am losing out for the benefit of UK property owners wealth and political projects. I'd still vastly prefer that over whatever you might imagine the alternative is.

A similar story can be told in the reverse direction: any rate is a political decision, and the losers have a story about how they're being oppressed.

The bank of england, fed, etc. are at least aware of the consequences of their decisions and have some level of accountability. Neither of which can be said for any automated system which acts completely ignorant of these matters.

This isnt feudalism, this is politics working the best it has in human history. If you imagine you could do better, I'd suggest that hell is much closer than heaven.

If you want to end fed controlled interest rates you would either need to abolish cash and replace it with cheques or introduce a demurrage currency as cash. Cash acts as a perpetual bond with a guaranteed 0% interest rate. If there is deflation then the nominal interest rate needs to be negative so that the real interest rate is correct again. If you can't express negative nominal interest you will have to run away from deflation aka permanently issue more money.

This is pretty much universal, even DAI (algorithmic stablecoin backed via deposited Ethereum, etc) has this problem. When DAI trades above the peg, the only answer is create more DAI and sell.

There is RAI where the answer to RAI being above the peg is to just lower the redemption rate.

The obvious answer then would be to introduce an optional dollar that has an interest rate built into it that can be negative. It doesn't have to replace every existing dollar bill, it just has to exist and in case of austerity or a recession the Fed will try to not increase the number of 0% dollars in circulation. This will make regular dollar bills trade above their face value meaning people are less likely to transact with 0% cash and instead electronic payments and the negative interest dollar will continue doing their job.

The money in Wörgl was named emergency money (Notgeld) for a reason. Fight the depression with a higher velocity of money, not more money.

> There is value in being able to anonymously and stably transfer value uncensored.

You mean when someone hands somebody else a 20?

I mean 50K from USA to Europe.

A briefcase then.

Anonymous, fail

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/kbyg/money

It's illegal to do it via crypto too.

If you are willing to break the law to do it via crypto, you are willing to break the law and smuggle it too.

The law isn't the arbiter of what is moral. History shows that countries enact capital controls. Morally, if I decide this is going against the contract with me and my country, I may choose to "break laws" in order to leave.

Crypto is a cruel joke played on the poor and middle class.

> For years I was mostly just confused that "crypto" was anything at all

crypto is cryptography for me, a serious and posh discipline of applied mathematics, linguistics, analytics and computer science.

Bad take regarding black mark.

Fintech and swinging for the fences is not a bad thing per se. As long as you aren’t an executive for a scam or something; I have never seen in my career experience being treated as a bad thing. Might perhaps get some added questions to get you, but it is also a unique selling point.

Crypto essentially allows you to make trust less systems with tokens, what those tokens mean or not depends on the situation. Writing that off as purely speculative isn’t necessarily fair. Utility tokens are a thing after all.

When and whether it should be a black mark is separate to whether it will be.

On highly technical roles with a highly technical hiring process, sure, it'll be fine. I think, however, lots now are scrambling to decrypto their image.

Black mark is exactly right. I wouldn’t hire someone who spent more than a couple of months at a crypto job — that’s enough time to realize what’s going on and get out. If they stayed longer, it invites the question of whether they’re gullible, incompetent, pathologically greedy, or too good at compartmentalizing.

Do you think “I was an accountant at Enron” is considered positive career experience in that field? Crypto is the equivalent in software engineering.

Are you actually responsible for hiring people? If so, it's quite a narrow-minded and borderline silly take on things. I've been hiring people for the last 8 or so years and if I come across a good engineer, I really don't care what industry they worked in, as long as they are capable, motived and a pleasure to work with.

I think crypto is mostly pointless but I've been working in and out of the sector for nearly 10 years. Why?

1. I have a family to look after and it pays quite well.

2. I get to work on technology which is very interesting and applicable to other domains - consensus alogirithms, security in a highly adversarial environment, peer to peer networking and associated networking alogirthms, the intersection of finance and technology, the intersection of economics and technology.

3. I get to use tools and langauges I enjoy working with.

4. I work with smart, interesting people from a variety of backgrounds.

5. The industry moves fast, so there's always something new to learn.

I get constant inbound from recruiters and no-one cares that I work in crpyto.

I'm responsible for giving hiring input and I've talked to multiple people who are solely responsible, and working in crypto isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, but for me and those people you're definitely competing at a disadvantage from the outset.

Fair enough. I believe that's commonly called discrimination.

haha good one. it is, but in a good way.

Which industry you've worked in is not a protected class, you can discriminate all you want.

Okay, I may be a bit blunt, but to spend any significant time with crypto means that you are either a) illiterate in finance, b) illiterate in technology, c) into scamming people, d) into gambling or e) into illegal things. If a or b, you yourself probably do not realize it. Anyway, any combination of these would constitute black mark in my recruitment process for most of the jobs.

But as soon as there's a conversion to/from fiat or anything else in the real world, you have to trust whatever exchange or vendor you're dealing with. That means it's still a system that requires trust. With cash and banks I can go to the legal system to get issues with trust violation addressed. With crypto, I'm up shit's creek with no recourse when the exchange I used gave my tokens away or my computer was hacked with malware. This is not exactly "better" by any stretch of things. For many people it is turning out to be immensely worse.

I'd personally see crypto experience as a very small point against someone.

> What is interesting is that amongst professional finance much of this has been apparent the whole time.

It is important to note, that even if from looking from far outside, finance looks like one thing, in reality there is a big divide within finance regarding how "value" is defined. On the other hand, there is a simple notion that value of a thing is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. And on the other hand, there is a bit more complex idea that if you somehow know the value of a cash flow, then if you are able to create the same cashflow in some other way, then the other cash flow must have same value.

The first one is the home of powerpoints, VC capital and crypto. (It's also easy to recognize these professional financiers once you start to discuss whether sweat equity should be valued similarly to cash equity. They are completely appalled with the idea, because reasons.)

The second is home of financial regulation, really fancy maths and modern banking risk management.

The failure modes are different here. The first one, typical failure model is scam. The second, well, you can google LTCM for that.

And what comes to crypto, there is a clear and obvious difference. The first ones see no reason why not investing into crypto, after all, someone is paying 60k for a BTC, its value is thus 60k, what more do you want? The second ones scratch their heads. They see no positive net cash flows anywhere, thus the value must be negative. And this is the reason (in addition to regulation) why banks and professional bankers for the most part keep clear from crypto and struggle seeing value, while VC money is/was pouring in.

Bitcoin solves what is called the double spending problem without a central authority. Any other existing digital cash system, including the present-day fiat currencies and payment infrastructure relying on them as well as other digital currencies, require a central authority to maintain and dictate the true history of a monetary ledger, to make sure that the same units of money are not spent twice. Bitcoin instead decentralizes the bookkeeping and uses a proof-of-work system to maintain consensus between independent bookkeepers about the true history of the ledger.

If someone steals from my bank account I’m getting that money back. Yes I’ve been scammed a couple times and had money withdrawn from an ATM in countries I’ve never been. Within 24 hours my money was back in my BoA checking. All my bank deposits are insured by the FDIC.

Not to mention my $dollars (or even €/£) have not lost a huge amount of value and fluctuated like a rabid dog.

Blockchain doesn’t help at all and most banks keep pretty good records.

Banks have an unpredictable money issuance policy. While Bitcoin's policy is know for the next 100 years.

That will allow unseen before economic growth for entities going on to the Bitcoin Standard, with proper planning.

After the first pioneers show to the world how it's done, it will become obvious to anyone that Bitcoin is the most advanced money we have as a civilization.

Ok but money has two sides. There are those who have it and those who accept it. What Bitcoin does is effectively provide a very expensive paper ledger but money is a social relationship between humans. There aren't enough people negotiating contracts denominated in Bitcoin. It is a very loose relationship that can be ended at any time.

I really don't understand what place your bank has telling you where you're allowed to send money. If I want to throw a small percentage of my net worth into a hugely speculative investment then fine, why are they stopping me? Are they stopping me from using my bank card down at the dog tracks or at a casino? Can I withdraw cash for Poker but not blackjack?

Having said that, it's weird because I definitely have sent money from one of the banks that aren't crypto-friendly to Binance in the past, so who knows how strong these bans really are.

This isn't about sophisticated investors wanting to bet 1% of their net worth on a speculative investment. It's about preventing ordinary people wiring their life savings to scams like OneCoin (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49826161).

There are various guarantees and payment codes of conduct that UK banks have signed up to. The intent of these is to give some protection if you've made a payment to a scammer.

What I presume is happening is that some banks are seeing a significant increase in applications for that protection from crypto transactions. Or are expecting to see such.

It doesn't apply when you withdraw cash as you have no recourse to protection from the bank if you subsequently lose that money. And you might be restricted from using you card at a casino if your bank has seen significant claims from said casino.

One can, of course, argue whether or not such protections should exist. As in, run the retail banking system on a caveat emptor basis. But that's not how it works in the UK and, whilst it doesn't, it's not unreasonable for the bank's to limit their liability.

> 47% of UK banks don’t allow customers to interact with crypto exchanges

And yet the state asks you to pay your taxes when you make added-value on crypto.

There are literally people who have taxes on added-value made on crypto due but are unable to pay them because their banks are refusing their money.

Take 10 K EUR out: easy. Take 1 million+ EUR out: it's extremely difficult.

The hypocrisy here is phenomenal: "cryptos are scams" / "cryptos are only for money laundering and drug dealing" / etc.

But then: "don't forget to pay your taxes to the nanny state on your crypto winnings".

And it's really vicious for the state says: "Oh, crypto went up 10000%, you hence have lots of taxes due to the state!" but the bank goes "Oh, you have a 7 digits sum in crypto, you must be a fraudster".

Sneaky bastards.

Is it really much different from the UK attitude to prostitution? Illegal to solicit but the actual act of exchanging money for sex is totally legal as long as it’s declared on taxes.

> Is it really much different from the UK attitude to prostitution?

It's actually quite similar I'd say. The hypocrisy behind that one is strong too.

> It's actually quite similar I'd say. The hypocrisy behind that one is strong too.

The City makes the rules, and it doesn't like competition in the only competitive sector they have left (finance), but you can rest assured they will get their cut while making it as difficult as possible for anyone to do so legally.

I really want people to see the inherit hypocrisy of this system, people get riled up about woke-based politics which is decisive and ultimately effective at letting these type of brazen injustices continue unabated.

I think the idea that taxes must be paid in a specific currency is immoral. Money means division of labor. If you must pay taxes on economic activity then the government effectively forces you to engage in the national division of labor/economy which basically means the taxes we owe turns us into debt slaves who must work in the debtors prison known as capitalism.

We can argue endlessly about what kind of tax rate is immoral or necessary to run a modern society but having to pay taxes in a single currency is definitively the most immoral aspect.

After all, a lot of things that you get taxed on are difficult to turn into money without selling the whole thing. Like a house or a family business. If you could give the government an x% share then you would have already gained a lot of freedom.

I don't understand the argument. 99% of UK banks don't allow customers to buy barrels of salted pork. But the state will ask you to pay your taxes if you make added-value selling barrels of salted pork

> There are literally people who have taxes on added-value made on crypto due but are unable to pay them because their banks are refusing their money.

If they have taxes on added-value, it means they sold tokens, so they can take that money out fo the exchange and use it to pay tax

> The hypocrisy here is phenomenal

you can be prosecuted for not declaring your drug earnings, on top of the actual crime of dealing drugs

Actually, that is perfectly normal in many tax systems, e.g. in Germany. Afaik the tax law doesn't care where the money comes from – it could be from a completely illegal activity, and you still own taxes on gains.

A lot of mainstream banks felt uncomfortable about getting involved with crypto. But at the tail end of a monetary bubble when everyone is chasing yield, the pressure from your board, your major investors, and your trend-following employees can be impossible to resist. It's just easier to go with the flow. But after FTX, the hype is dead and they can quietly shelve their projects and move on.

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. — John Maynard Keynes

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one. ― Charles MacKay

How about letting people do what they want with their own money?

Because politicians will blame the banks when too many people lose their money

Sadly that is what scammers say too.

Society picks up the bill when mom and dad bet the pension savings on crypto and they have to take public money into retirement. The banks are trying to essential provide a cooling off period so regular people don't get obliterated. The same people that complain about the impinging government are usually the first to ask for a handout the moment something goes wrong etc etc.

Society pick up the bill when they bet the pension on a legal and regulated gambling site too. Or when they bet it all on leveraged tech stocks. Why stop you doing one thing and not the others?

I'm not particularly pro-crypto, but it's an interesting question that we haven't answered very well. It's clear to me that the state shouldn't stop you doing anything risky with your money - that also means stopping people starting businesses. But where do you draw the line? Problem gamblers often funnel every penny they have into betting sites - losing their house in the process. Wall street bets makes it clear that leveraged stocks can cause the same problems. Should we ban them too?

>The same people that complain about the impinging government are usually the first to ask for a handout the moment something goes wrong

Really? This doesn't seem to match my experience.

Ayn Rand, patron saint of those people, was on Social Security, for a famous example.

I recall society picking up a very large bill for said banks in 2008, when mom and dad bet everything on property prices rising indefinitely for reasons.

TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested

The "society" made a profit.

It is a reverse hostage situation. Banks enable the modern society to work but if they are gone so is our economy because of an insufficient "investment" in diversifying the money system. In theory we could do a multitude of alternative money approaches like barter clubs or local complementary currencies and then the risk of major banks failing wouldn't be the complete loss of the economy, only a big chunk.

> The same people that complain about the impinging government are usually the first to ask for a handout the moment something goes wrong etc etc.

Banks and Megacorps?

Are we all going to just forget 2008 and the simple fact that this technology was created to counter the UK's baiput policy (it's written in the genesis block!) and subsequent inflation tht is due to the rampant increase in money creation PRIMARILY made to bail-out businesses who couldn't or didn't have any savings and were on the verge on bankruptcy at the onset of COVID? The people got crumbs by comparison (extended UI benefits and some never got them at all) and were allowed to enter a roaring hot stock market created by tis glut f Capital pumped into the system and busineses lookign for yield any where they can find it and the minority of this sector (home owners) benefited from the sky high real estate appreciation boom, but it's peak tech-bro to say it was the average person who was the benefactors of any of this (some Industries were completely obliterated and many died in order to return to work despite being deemed essential workers) when it's clear it's the parasitic banking and corporations who are the ones that benefit the most.

I agree that 'crytpo' has been a misused moniker to describe the entirety of cryptocurrencies, but if you have anything but cursory knowledge on any of it and can resist letting yourself be swayed by click bait-headlines you'll realize that it's Bitcoin separated from the rest of crypto.

Tell that to all the crypto exchanges that stopped withdrawals...

People who do what they want with their money sometimes need protecting from themselves.

Those who don't want banks involved in their lives are free to adopt some other form of exchange. This may be considered irony.

Banks are for money, not wild Ponzi schemes.

People can play Ponzi schemes as they like, banks probably should not be involved.

People can do what they want with their money. In this case, they can move their money to one of the many banks who don't place restrictions on transactions.

The beauty of the free market is that people are free to move their custom. And businesses are free to set the limitations necessary for profitable enterprise.

Some banks have decided that the risk to having to support customers who engage in risky behaviour is too high. There are literally dozens of free banks in the UK, and it is incredibly easy to switch provider.

In theory. I have lived in a country where all banks banned crypto exchange payments.

> In this case, they can move their money to one of the many banks who don't place restrictions on transactions.

Voting with your feet doesn't work. Moreover, banks or credit card processors shouldn't be the arbiters of what you should be allowed to spend your money on.

Of course it does - I have had banks close my accounts as they did not want to be associated with me. I opened accounts elsewhere and carried on.

I am free to do my business, they are free to not take my business. We are all free.

They've banned crypto, but actual gambling is more popular and more heavily advertised then ever

This may be true but some banks also do a lot to prevent it, such as a need to specifically request betting transactions to be allowed on your account.

I also think that people losing money from betting actually know what they are getting into though. The same can not be said for some other transactions.

There's also all the 'near-gambling' of F2P games with gacha/lootbox systems, which has none of the regulation of 'real gambling'

Gambling is a lot more regulated though. And it doesn't have the tendency to say "hey bet all of your life savings with us, you can't lose!" like crypto does.

I logged into a gambling site and saw that you could make $5000 individual BlackJack bets. $5k a bet is a lot of money and gone in a second. This is not well regulated and needs help. With crypto you at least have some sh*tcoin left, with online casinos nothing.

Does the cryptocurrency industry also allow banning yourself from betting on it (and respect this ban by ensuring you don't create multiple accounts)? That's just one of the controls in place in gambling industry.

Is speculating on crypto anywhere near as addictive as fast-paced casino-style gambling?

And people don't tend to ban themselves from gambling sites until after they've made big losses. It'd be the same for crypto.

Will be interesting to see how former finance minister now PM reconciles the banks' hesitancy with his own grandiose plans of making the UK a crypto capital

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/01/what-rishi-sunak-as-pm-means...

I think that plan will be quietly forgotten, to the relief of everyone who knew it was obvious nonsense when it came up first time.

Found this enlightening ...

"White is also sceptical about solutions purporting to show which crypto companies represent a risk for banks and their customers. “It’s hard to individually predict which companies might later become a problem because, if banks knew a project was fraudulent, then people wouldn’t really be putting money into it,” she says."

and this quite validating:

"As financial institutions and the crypto industry continue to grapple over the right amount of regulation, others in the private sector have begun questioning the longevity and relevance of the industry itself after back-to-back scandals. Earlier this month in The Economist, the FTX collapse was described as a ‘catastrophic blow to crypto’s reputation and aspirations’ while a Reuters podcast similarly declared that the incident ‘consigns crypto to fringes of finance’. "

yeah, it'd be interesting to see how the recent scandals like FTX shape opinions about crypto among other mainstream sectors beyond banking

> This crypto ban by Starling comes off the heels of Santander’s decision to limit customer deposits to crypto exchanges to £1,000 per transaction and a monthly limit of £3,000

This, ironically, validates the argument for crypto that banks cannot be trusted to let you do what you want with your own money.

>that banks cannot be trusted to let you do what you want with your own money.

Well that's because we put them partially on the hook for when we, Joey Public, fall for scams, we expect and demand that the banks give us back the money we were scammed for.

I mean, I personally haven't, but I've read multiple newspaper articles about it.

Indeed. UK papers have had many stories of late about people sending their savings to scammers and then complaining their bank didn’t do enough to stop them, putting the bank on the hook for compensation because of the Quincecare duty of care.

Do you think that's a real problem, or a convenient (manufactured/inflated) problem?

I'm pretty sure they could simply add to their terms of service "no refunds for crypto purchases" and that'd be understandable, legal, and enforceable. Advertising this position prominently would make naive crypto "dabblers" second-guess themselves. So, in my opinion the problem you're referring to is not real.

There are no such limits/bans on gambling in general.

> I'm pretty sure they could simply add to their terms of service "no refunds for crypto purchases" and that'd be understandable, legal, and enforceable.

It definitely wouldn't work. I'm sure they have similar conditions for "don't read your PIN out on the phone" but people still do and still often get refunded for it.

I wish there was a switch that let me accept the consequences of my own actions but be allowed to take them in the first place. I don’t use crypto but it isn’t my bank’s job to tell me where I can send my money.

There is a switch. Don't associate with the banks for your finances. Take your money out. No one is forcing you to keep it there.

Real practical advice there.

There is/was before. You have to waive rights to get that switch enabled, in the past when I looked at what that meant - it was waiving litterally any recourse over any money extracted from your account by any means.

Better than giving it to crypto scammers

Not a crypto fan but I think you should be allowed to give your money to any scammer of your choice.

Meh. Probably not, there are systemic risks from people losing all their money all at once. It's a good thing to incentivize catching and blocking transactions to scammers.

I hate scammers with unbridled fury, but I will not transact with any bank that thinks it can impose what I do with my own money.

Do they remember this thing called asking? I will respect the opinion of bankers and investors if they ask me, or I ask them, but ultimately the decision should be mine.

Otherwise it is going to the banking equivalent of Google's customer service. Callous, automated, unreachable.

Just to be clear, even if I very much would like to agree with you in theory, in practice this is what you are advocating, like it or not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania

Yep, and if they're willing to limit deposits, they're liable to limit withdrawals too.

Ah, yes, the freedom to invest all your life savings in obvious unregulated scams such as FTX.

Cryptocurrencies advocate for a very libertarian point of view: you are the only responsible of your money, and if you get scammed, sucks to be you. Banks on the other hand are much more "social": they are protecting you against scammers, and sometimes against yourself.

I know a case of a person falling to a "Hello we're the FBI we need to get your money for an undercover operation but we'll give it back", wiring tens of thousands to scammers. The bank did everything they could, including "losing" the wire order until that person family and friends managed to bring the victim back to their senses. The same story would have been very different with Bitcoin.

People here on HN are tech savvy, and smart enough to not fall into these scams. But advocating for a system that will leave all the most vulnerable members of our society penniless is quite astounding to me. "Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".

And what is the name of an institution that allows you to deposit unlimited amounts of money, but when you try to withdraw it they don’t let you? FTX? Yes. A bank? Also yes.

In Lebanon people are holding up the banks at gunpoint to withdraw their own money.

I am not pretending that banks are perfect. But regulations are made so these situations happen as little as possible. In cryptocurrencies, such frauds and gross mismanagement are called an ordinary Monday.

I don't really understand this. I'm very, very bearish to all things crypto, but how is banks stopping their customers transferring money to crypto businesses meant to prevent risk to the banks itself?

Customers of a bank which blocks crypto will be less valuable targets for attacks since crypto is the easiest and fastest way to extract non refundable money from an account.

When people are victims of fraud, the banks are generally expected to do something about it. I would conject that they may have had to refund too many people for crypto-related woes?

"In recent years, “authorised push payment” (APP) scams, where a payer is deceived or defrauded into authorising a payment to a criminal, have increased both in value and volume, with many individuals suffering significant financial and emotional harm.

... which proposed introducing mandatory reimbursement for APP scams which occur over Faster Payments, as well as other measures to improve fraud prevention."

If your bank is signed up to the voluntary Authorised Push Payment Scam Code which launched on 28 May 2019 it has to take a number of steps to protect their customers and reimburse customers who aren’t to blame.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-approa...

UK financial industry brings $100 billion dirty money a year into the country. If the banks support the crypto they can double that amount in short span of time.

I think UK could do it.

> UK financial industry brings $100 billion dirty money a year into the country.

Official estimates says, depending on the source, that from 1.5% up to 5% of the world's GDP is tied to criminal activities.

The GDP is about 100 trillion.

Cryptos are a complete insignificant drop in the bucket. Even if 100% of cryptos were linked to crime, it's still be absolutely nothing compared to the actual criminal activities ongoing (like drug trafficking) and the percentage of the worldwide GDP they represent.

If this policy expanded to all UK banks, it could plausibly make the UK a less interesting target for ransomware and similar cryptocurrency-backed extortion schemes.

I imagine you'll always be able to use something like Western Union to make such payments.

At least in principal, with a service like Western Union, an actual human or other KYC’d entity needs to collect the money at the other end. If you run a $100M ransomware campaign, a very enthusiastic prosecutor is fairly likely to arrange to arrest people well before $100M gets cashed out, and without perfect opsec, you have a problem.

And Western Union respects sanctions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union#Controversies

Not so much.

I did say “in principle” for a reason (although I did misspell it).

That being said, with a large enough fraud campaign, law enforcement really could target Western Union’s users.

I believe Australia is moving towards making it illegal to pay crypto ransoms. Cybercrime has gone absolutely wild over the last few years and cutting off the money tap should do some good.

Here in Blighty, paying a ransom is legal per se.......

.....but making payments to a sanctioned country or a terrorist organisation is very illegal (as I suspect it is in most of the world).

For this reason, any organisation obeying the law will refuse to pay the ransom.

How transacting through a bank to move money on/off crypto exchanges could be "risky" for the bank? Unless banks don't want account holders to spend (or lose) their money, to keep better balance sheets.. but banks shouldn't dictate what customers do with their cash. Exactly the reason customers want to be less dependent on high-street banks and keep their money/investments in a self-custody.

Self-custody is the largest appeal of crypto currencies.

Looking at the actual report, only Monzo and Revolut (yes, I haven't heard of them either) are "crypto friendly". The others could best be described as wary and watchful.

Monzo and Revolut are well-known in the UK, I use Monzo myself and have for several years.

Revolut sells crypto

...and is not a licensed bank (UK).

That licence is taking a very long time to process ...

Monzo has been known for freezing accounts at the drop of a hat in the past, possibly for cryptocurrency related reasons if /r/Monzo is to be believed.

Revolut is not a good bank.

While Monzo is cryptocurrency friendly [0] they don't allow payments to binance [1] however thats down to a Consumer warning on Binance from the FCA [2] so I think thats basically a industry wide thing not just a Monzo thing. Silly enough, if you have a paypal account and a PayPal debit card you can use that card on Binance.

[0]: https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/monzo-crypto... (basically just says yes they are)

[1]: https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/binance-bloc...

[2]: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/consumer-warning-bi...

This is a dangerous precedent of "legal, but harmful" creeping in, where you cannot spend _your own money_ on something authority thinks is not in your best interest.

It's like as if people commenting here want CBDCs and would love the banks to impose savings limits on their accounts and pretend that they know best what you should be spending your digital cash on. [0]

[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/digital-euro-spending-saving-limit...

The most of people commenting here are payed to portray that a certain idea about how the future should be is well accepted by the majority of people.

They are even from an military organization, running psyops.

Public opinion must be managed on open forums and this how they do it.

They have hundreds of accounts that play dialogues on important issues trying to manipulate public opinion.

*hundreds of thousands accounts

UK Banks have always been very wary of crypto. It was always a worry that your account might get suddenly closed if you interacted too much with the crypto ecosystem

A friendly reminder that all the recent drama has zero to do with crypto, rather 100% to do with corruption at a human scale by 3rd party services which are not in any way crypto, they are traditional financial services peddling cryto wares.

Get your keys off banks and 3rd parties, thats the whole point of why this started ... Exactly because of crooks like ftx and those peotecting them.

In other words, real crypto hasn't been tried yet. We dismiss communists when they make such statements, why should we make an exception for crypto?

Human factors are part and parcel of crypto. I don't think we can pretend that there exists a world where everyone just behaves properly despite every incentive to defraud people

Your “no true crypto-bro” argument is unpersuasive. The entirety of cryptocurrency is based on selling later to greater fools, even for hodlers with hardware wallets.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

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