Hacker News Reader

Comment by raincom | Hacker News Reader

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "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."

I didn't dispute any transactions, nor did I deposit any fraudulent checks, no check bounces, no overdrafts, no cash deposits, no wires, not an instance of disrespecting any Chase employee either on phone or in person. Yes, I used Zelle often, I deposited checks often. When people complain about debanking, many folks defend these banks, saying that there are good reasons for these banks to close (some transaction, etc).

Banks are heavily regulated, I understand. Regulators want to see a certain number of SAR and CTR filings based on the size of bank. If a bank has 1M accounts, regulators want to see a certain number of SAR/CTR filings, a certain number of account closures; regulators go hard on financial institutions, if the latter don't follow the industry average (#SARs, #CTRs, #closures). This has created a vicious loop: banks use machine-learning/AI to flag accounts; then, back office employees 95% of the time just close these accounts.

Welcome to the new debanking world. Chase and many others also monitor your political activity, social media, protests, etc. If they don't like you, they can close your account by simply stating that "we have an obligation to know our customers; after careful consideration, we decided to close your account". When banks decide to close your checking accounts, beware that they also close your credit cards (esp Chase is notorious for this).

View on HN

The article demonstrated over and over that in some instances branch managers really did know their customers, and that knowledge was ignored by an algorithm run amuck. Monitoring transactions should not be sufficient to satisfy KYC.

Perhaps this article demonstrates that the largest banks are unable to know their customers and truly act on that information. And, perhaps having those banks engage in self-destructive mass cancelations serves regulators' purposes just fine.

No such thing as "an algorithm run amuck" - more like "another department run amuck". Someone programmed the thing, someone is running it deliberately.

Regulators fined Chase and other big banks for "weak controls". One way to show that these big banks have "strong controls" is to change parameters for these algorithms. Many legitimate transactions fall under structuring, layering, smurfing, laundering. After all, any goal of money laundering is to make their transactions appear "legitimate". Now almost all transactions (except for big businesses and people with few bills and pay stubs) come under scrutiny.

Strong controls = more false positives, more account closures, more SAR reports. That's what regulators want, and politicians don't want to rein on these regulators either by amending laws or by reducing "too much discretion" given to regulators. Of course, those affected by debanking (ordinary citizens and small businesses) don't have that kind of lobbying power to bring any such changes.

Big businesses instead can own small banks in fly over states, and run their transactions through those banks. Maybe, it is time to bank with local credit unions, as the latter allow mobile deposits. Once FedNow takes hold across credit unions, better switch to credit unions.

Another lesson: every one should have at least three checking accounts (one or two big banks; one or two credit unions).

All the examples cited in the article were with big banks who are probably the ones most likely to be employing these automated systems and getting pressure from regulators. For the benefit of decentralization and avoidance of CBDC's I am moving my accounts more to the smaller regional banks.

> One way to show that these big banks have "strong controls" is to change parameters for these algorithms

imagine if some bank knowingly facilitated money laubdering, and needed to show they gave strong controls. What eould you do?

Thats right, you would close 10k minor accounts of random schmucks for 'suspicious activity', report 'job done' to the regulator, and continue your corrupt practices

The fundamental problem here is that these regulations are totally useless. Look into the effectiveness of KYC laws -- they're basically zero percent effective.

And the reason for that is that if anybody knew that somebody was engaged in criminal activity, they wouldn't have their bank account closed, they would be arrested and their finances seized by court order. So the bank account closures only happen to people for whom there is not enough evidence to charge them with a crime. In other words, a ton of innocent people.

Conversely, the bank is not a law enforcement agency and has no real way to distinguish between the kind of criminals who know how not to be obvious and the aforementioned totally innocent people, and if anything the practiced criminals are the ones who know how not to trigger the fraud detection algorithms, unlike the innocent people.

So the criminals don't get caught and the government blames the banks for this, but the banks still don't have any good way to know who the criminals actually are, so all they can ever do is round up random innocent people to put on a show of punishing somebody.

The fraud is that law enforcement should be an obligation of the banking system and that fraud needs to be eliminated.

> imagine if some bank knowingly facilitated money laundering

You won't have to imagine very hard, HSBC was caught laundering money, told they had to strengthen their controls, but ultimately all the Justice Department wanted was a small cut of the action in the form of fines and HSBC has been allowed to continue their corrupt practices even after being caught laundering money again and again (in addition to all kinds of other crimes). It seems like as long as they can pay the fines, banks are basically above the law.

One way to prove weak controls is also to show that low-level branch employees have the ability to override AML/KYC flags, and regularly do so. That's not just poor controls, it's demonstrating knowledge of the transactions being suspicious while enabling them anyway.

GP says "monitoring transactions should not be sufficient to satisfy KYC" - of course monitoring transactions is required to satisfy AML, flagging any transactions indicates specific knowledge of them being suspicious, and failing to act in any cases where it was warranted will be used as proof of lax controls, with fines starting in the hundreds of millions.

Isn't this where documentation of actual KYC would come in? "Flagged for reason X; Overridden by local manager - follows 10 lines of CYA justification"? Normally that's good enough for administrations.

The second time it's flagged for reason X+1, include 10 lines from rank 2 manager.

That probably would be acceptable but it's not clear it is worth the bank's while to do that

It seemed in these reports that the local manager was surprised. ... But it may be that they were only "suprised", i.e. not about to say that the system did prompt them but they ignored the prompt. Possible. It is also possible that the bank only prompts the local manager if the client has enough estimated net worth or estimated lifetime client business value. The kind of thing that might make sense but wouldn't be disclosed until there is a lawsuit.

Wrt keeping multiple accounts, what is the benefit of that compared to the overhead of monitoring and managing them? Is it just a contingency? Banks in particular have no real reason to give you your money back or respect your privacy. Why would I put my money in an institution that I can't trust?

In this context, the implied reason is that your still have a bank account if one of the banks decides to close or freeze your account. If you can do without an account altogether (how??), good for you, I guess.

Banks send out a cashier check upon closing accounts. I was pointing out some edge cases (last deposited check being the culprit of closure; however, this check was cleared by the payee bank). Contingency is one reason. It also depends on what you use banks for. If it is direct deposit from jobs and paying bills, big banks are okay.

The moment you start use Zelle heavily, one of those zelle recipients is linked with suspicious activity, that's a problem (btw, Zelle is owned by big banks). Banks find so many things suspicious: many check deposits, many zelle transfers, low balances, many cash/money order deposits, asking for cashier checks, wires(both domestic and foreign), any crypto activity, being a public figure, names similar to those on OFAC list, etc. Basically, they want normal customers (4 pay stubs, paying 10 bills a month) or extremely wealthy clients. Otherwise, you don't fit the average profile, and whatever you do is construed as not being legitimate.

> Banks in particular have no real reason to give you your money back

Of course they do. If they didn't have a reason, why would they do it?

> Maybe, it is time to bank with local credit unions, as the latter allow mobile deposits.

I've never used a credit union and have had access to mobile deposits at everything from large multinational banks to small local ones for well over a decade.

Or rather two departments being very good boys: these banks claim to have human reviewers. A first level of automatic flagging (with people running that) and a human review that the flagging deserves debanking (with people doing and running that).

The second, human level is off shore and very tough to get clear with even if nothing was truly wrong. Chase once gave me exactly 7 days around the holidays to present a power of attorney, with no way to escalate or just leave the account frozen a little longer. Since that crew is sitting in the other side of the planet and Christmas is meaningless they didn't care. I survived that episode with them but it gave me the heads up to look around.

>No such thing as "an algorithm run amuck" - more like "another department run amuck". Someone programmed the thing, someone is running it deliberately.

Not to defend banks, but you know how many bugs the average large software system has?

With such a critical activity that has the potential to destroy lives, "a bug" is not a good enough excuse. Hire a human to override the bug driven decision. These aren't bugs but conscious decisions taken by each bank because the fallout is on few enough customers that they don't need to worry. I've worked with/in enough banks to know someone intentionally drew a line and everyone who happens to fall under it can just suck it up.

You're not wrong. Chase has 18.5 million checking accounts and 25 million debit cards, so they can afford to lose a whole lot of small customers while still saving a bunch of money with the automation.

That’s the danger with the size of these things. With 18.5 million customers, they could literally murder a couple dozen a year and it’d be hardly noticeable.

I'm not arguing that the system must not have bugs, really - you are right there. I'm arguing that since everyone knows it does, then the system must provide for that. That is, the institution that we are buying the service from needs to be able to sort things out when it happens. Here we have abundant examples where they have no plan to even notice anything. - And that then they should not be surprised when we are desperate to find a better institution that is not THEM.

I'm usually a crypto sceptic but your story scares me, because it'll only get worse with time.

Just a tip, stick with Bitcoin, not crypto.

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

Lots of discussion in the comments here about how ingrained banks are into our current system. I do honestly see Bitcoin as a way out of that, but at this early stage of it, you'd probably have to get help from someone who is not debanked in order to interact with our heavily banked system. If you are honestly interested in this, take a close look at Strike.

BTC or BCH?

BTC. BCH was a failed attempt at improving Bitcoin

I mostly agree with krupan's answer below, but it depends on use-case.

BTC for investment or long-term store of value. BCH, or various other alternatives (Litecoin, XRP, Stellar, cough Nano cough), for making payments. But if you can use the Lightning network, then BTC works for payments as well (arguably - in this space anything and everything is highly arguable).

If you're seriously looking down the track at using cryptocurrency, spend some time playing with small amounts of it to see how it all works. Different coins have different use-cases, and it's very confusing to come from zero knowledge. Also transferring and converting between different coin types can kill you in fees, so keep an eye on that as well.

And in doing your research don't believe what anyone says about anything, especially youtube folks. Find the most likely narratives amongst the jungle of snakes and traps, based on your own experience at detecting bullshit and applying logic.

I'm sorry, but playing with anything other than BTC Bitcoin and lightning is just going to waste your time and resources. I'm sorry, but the last 15 years has taught us that again and again. Definitely do your own research, start with small amounts, but be very, very careful especially with anything not BTC.

Comment feels like a great example of a bitcoin-maxi. An important data point, worth paying strong heed to, but also worth understanding the reasons behind bitcoin-maxi perspectives in order to see where you fit along the scale.

Bitcoin itself has the longest, most proven history. It's the safest house in the least safe neighbourhood. It's also the best performing asset of it's lifetime so far (something like that anyway).

It's use-case has changed since it was created, and there are additional use-cases to which other cryptocurrencies cater, smart contracts being the primary example (which then facilitate a whole other ecosystem of products, of arguable value and utility to humanity).

I'm around 50% bitcoin-maxi, to expose my illogical stance :)

I also have barely a little toe dipped into that particular asset pool, so my opinion isn't necessarily fully formed or well founded.

> take a close look at Strike.

Could you clarify what you find interesting about it? I skimmed their website and looks like just a lightning wallet. Am I missing some key feature that helps one interact with fiat systems?

It is a lightning wallet, a Bitcoin wallet, an exchange, and a venmo like payment app.

> 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 minutes of searching "USDC pay bill":

https://www.spritz.finance/blog/pay-bills-crypto

https://bitpay.com/bill-pay/

- As for transaction costs, L2s are already being deployed, and their fees will only be further reduced as improvements to the L2 networks are made.

https://l2fees.info/

USDC and stablecoins are centrally controlled and do not solve the problems that we are talking about here.

From just one of those L2 networks:

> Optimism is an EVM-equivalent Optimistic Rollup chain.

I’ll be right back, I need to explain this one to grandma.

> > Optimism is an EVM-equivalent Optimistic Rollup chain.

> I’ll be right back, I need to explain this one to grandma.

Term by term:

- EVM-equivalent: The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the part that allows smart contract code can be run on the network. EVM-equivalency means that you can just drop in your smart contract code, and it has to run as it would on Ethereum itself.

- Optimistic Rollup: A Rollup is the current consensus for scaling up the network, by outsourcing compute to other networks, and pushing the important end state back into Ethereum. Optimistic rollups do this by assuming that there'll be at least 1 person to challenge a proposed block whenever that block's invalid. This setup however has the shortcoming of needing there to be a challenge window for other participants in the network to have time to respond.

Just as an FYI, USDC & stablecoins (and CBDC's) are centralised and the same abuse of power is possible here too. Obviously being debanked in fiat and crypto at the same time is extremely unlikely...but possible if someone is REALLY out to get you.

> Just as an FYI, USDC & stablecoins (and CBDC's) are centralised and the same abuse of power is possible here too.

It's the unfortunate consequence of one gigantic unaddressable problem:

USD can only be minted efficiently by the Fed.

- Collateralized stablecoins exist, but they're inefficient in that they must be overcollateralized to cushion against falling asset values.

- USDC & their kind are efficient, but at the cost of being centralization vectors as a result of current US legislation

- An efficient synthetic stablecoin can exist, but it requires deep liquidity in the marketplace to keep the peg stable. (Probably > $100B at the ready to absorb panic sells) Synthetic stocks are the closest analogy available for this, but applied upon a currency. The chicken-and-egg means that bootstrapping something like this is not feasible at small scales: It needs to be big from the get go.

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

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

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.

Hmmmmm, I wonder if there is some way we could setup a website like Local Bitcoins but decentralized? Like with ipfs or i2p or something...

The sellers who run it as a business might risk getting an unlicensed money transfer penalty depending on the country they are operating from.

Law: 18 U.S. Code § 1960

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

Yeah, to say that "Bitcoin" is the epitome of blockchain technology, an ever-innovating field, is either ignorant or disingenuous.

Bitcoin is ever innovating in ways that are safe and transparent, see Taproot that was added fairly recently. Other crypto has proven to be at best run by incompetent folks, at worst straight up scams. Either way you lose with them. Sorry, but that's what the years have taught us.

Well, I would totally disagree. I love safe and transparent but it is just not what gets the job done. I've had to transfer money to people around the world and people have asked to send them dollar-pegged tokens on networks like Tron and Polygon. These are not ideologically sexy networks at all but they have clearly found product-market fit. Metamask (convenience) + low fees + fiat peg (less volatility and easier to understand) and people are all about it. And, whether we like it or not, it works.

Meanwhile I've had the majority of my net worth on Ethereum for over 5 years now and am not really worried about it. And I get user experience that I can never get with bitcoin, like social recovery smart contract wallets.

And taproot is two years old.

Safe? Tacking on higher energy-costs through more complexity and increasing pollution across the planet as a result of the increased energy expenditure is safe innovation?

Distributed permissionless databases of any sort are a bust and a scam, period. This was tested and found true in the 70s.

Can you describe to me what the main point of "blockchain technology" is? What is there to innovate in terms of its core function?

Without a general purpose (i.e. Turing complete) and sufficiently expressive programming language (i.e. providing an idiomatic and expressive manner to build general-purpose logic) associated to the ledger you cannot build scaling technology that inherits the self-custodial, permissionless, and censorship resistance qualities of the underlying ledger. Nor a financial system that inherits those same properties.

If you think about it you are very limited in what you can do. You have an asset that you can self-custody, exchange permissionlessly and without censorship which is good to fight what the original article is about. But you cannot build any financial product on top of it that would have those same properties. Nor be able to scale the transactions per second that the base layer does while keeping those same properties. And I find it very unlikely you can serve the entire world with 7 transactions per second. So yes, there is plenty to innovate on its core function.

> you cannot build scaling technology that inherits the self-custodial, permissionless, and censorship resistance qualities of the underlying ledger

Correct, and yet you seem to still miss the point. There are tradeoffs. You can't scale AND maintain those properties. This is why Bitcoin scales with layer 2 solutions like Lightning (and more ideas like Enigma, Ark, Cashu etc.), or things like RGB or Taro for expressiveness. Separation of concerns.

The best attempts to have their cake and eat it too have failed in crypto.

There is very little innovation to be had in the core function of what a blockchain was designed to achieve. There's plenty of innovation ahead of us for the layers that are built on top of it.

> You can't scale AND maintain those properties.

zk-proofs allow you to do so. It's seeing very active development, and yes it involves an L2. The issue you seemed to have ignored is that to be able for the L2s to inherit those properties from the L1, the L1 needs to have sufficient expressiveness to be able to build the proof verifiers. I would love to see how anyone builds such a thing on bitcoin.

Old thread, I know. But there are a few:

* Transaction throughput.

* Efficiency - allowing small scale players to participate in verification and block production.

* Inter-chain communication - some networks are explicitly designed as connected swarms of chains (Cosmos and polkadot for example) and some evolving into that direction outside of the protocol level (Ethereum). How do execute transactions that span the networks is an ongoing research topic.

* Privacy - how to execute transactions in private. How to attest that something is true, say that you have a certain credential, without exposing your account information. Blockchain has been why zero knowledge (and now homo-morphic encryption it seems) cryptography are becoming an active field of research.

* Identity, authentication, account recovery. - these tie into cryptography but generally research on applied cryptography with good UX. For example the first time I've seen social-recovery accounts with any amount of usage (now a feature in Apple accounts) was in a blockchain application.

* Monetary research - far from everybody involved in crypto believes that a fixed-supply rare item makes for good money. "Fiat" money is basically a "token" with governance attached to it. This has lead to a wave of experimentation with other forms of tokens - ones that are algorithmically tied to other assets, ones that are backed by an organization, local currencies, etc.

* Organizational research - since smart contracts can effectively be transparent community banks there's has been a plethora of experiments with building organizations that manage their own treasuries. Horizontalism, organizational transparency and cooperation is something that's been at the core of many crypto projects, the idea being that something cannot be both a reliable public good and controlled by a single party. It's not an easy task, but some cool organizations have come out of this. For an example look at pocket: https://messari.io/report/governor-note-proof-of-participati...

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...

> But neither currency has ever done a roll back of this nature again.

Maybe not a rollback, but Ethereum has proven it is malleable time and time again. As one example, compare the issuance of ether to Bitcoin. Eth's issuance is a dog's breakfast, indicative of changing opinions by those who call the shots... just like a central bank.

Bitcoin's issuance? Predictable and steady as a rock for 15 years.

Another example is replacing Proof-of-Work with Proof-of-Stake. A core part of how it works, important for censorship resistance and accessibility, and they removed it for something permissioned that makes censorship far easier.

Bitcoin? Still on PoW and never going to change. If you think it will change, you still don't understand Bitcoin. But never fear, there's already a PoS Bitcoin out there (that no one uses).

I don't know why you're replying to my comment, because I wasn't talking about any of those other issues you've said here. I did not confirm or deny them.

I quoted the single issue that I was disputing. I wrote as clearly as possible to only refute one point, about the implication that Bitcoin had never done a roll back.

If you want to talk about all those other things, then make a separate thread or post,. Please don't use my comment as a vehicle for your arguments, because it's confusing and few people will understand what you're talking about.

No.

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know that bit of Bitcoin history. I see a big fundamental difference between that chain fork and the ethereum DAO fork. The bitcoin fork was to fix a bug in the bitcoin source code. Without doing that fork, bitcoin would have died. All bitcoin users would have suffered if the fork had not been done. No bitcoin users complained about it.

The ethereum fork was to fix a bug in a smart contract running on top of ethereum. That bug only affected those who were participating in that smart contract (which was code for an investment scheme that a private organization had dreamed up). Lots of ethereum users complained about it.

Can you see the difference?

>Can you see the difference?

Yes, I do see some differences. It's true that the situations were not identical. Thanks for your interesting reply.

One important difference is that the amount of money lost in the DAO was MUCH larger than the amount lost by the Bitcoin bug (the Bitcoin bug simply lost the total value of all valid Bitcoins, which I guess was only about $1m at that time in 2010, with few individuals holding substantial amounts). This meant that not much money was at stake and fewer people were affected, so the roll back was less contentious.

But there's a VERY important similarity between the two events: They were both existential threats to the respective currency.

That existential threat to Bitcoin was obvious. As you have just said, Bitcoin would have died if they did not quickly invalidate the 'faked' Bitcoins, because the quantity completely dwarfed the true Bitcoin money supply. So it was clearly the right thing to do.

The existential threat of the DAO bug to Ethereum was less clear. There was also more time to decide what to do, because the stolen funds had not yet been released from the smart contract, (and I recall the money could be stalled in the contract almost indefinitely by white hat hackers iteratively exploiting the same bug that had created the problem.)

But the consensus at the time, very early in Ethereum's life, was that Ethereum might die if 15% of the entire currency was in a state of limbo, or in the hands of a malicious hacker. This was compounded by the reputational damage and loss of confidence caused by such a huge disaster that directly impacted thousands of the most active Ethereum users, not just a few Ethereum developers.

I pointed out that some Ethereum developers lost substantial amounts in the DAO, so I can accept that personal financial loss probably also biased the decisions of some of them to approve a roll back.

But I personally don't believe that personal loss suffered by some Ethereum developers was a very significant factor in the decision to do a roll back of the DAO event. To explain my reasoning: That is why I mentioned the Parity bug.

The Parity bug was an even larger loss in financial terms, but it only affected a very small number of people, who mostly were Ethereum developers. The lost money was destroyed, not stolen. It did not affect the wider community, so it was not seen as an existential threat to Ethereum. So there was no question of a roll back.

Possibly the quite acrimonious argument over the DAO fix, which was bad enough to cause a semi-viable hard fork (creating the ETC currency), was an additional factor discouraging the developers and community from accepting a roll back to fix the Parity bug and later incidents.

Edit: Like you've mentioned, another difference is that the Bitcoin issue was a bug in Bitcoin itself. The Ethereum issues were coding bugs in smart contracts. I'm just making an observation about that, not claiming that one currency is better than the other.

Another way of looking at it:

The bitcoin fork was to fix a broken promise. The bug meant that Bitcoin didn't work as promised, the code fix and fork fixed that.

One of Ethereum's promises around smart contracts was, "code is law." The fork broke that promise by circumventing the smart contract code.

It is good that they have never done that again, but they have been making other big changes to the original Ethereum code not to fix bugs and broken promises, but to change the way it works. That, to me, is a concern.

"Since then, there have been various incidents involving Ethereum and Bitcoin and hacks or smart contract bugs that caused losses of millions or billions"

Sneaky of you to add "Bitcoin" to that sentence, implying that smart contract bugs on Bitcoin, or Bitcoin hacks have cost people millions or billions. That is completely false, but nice try.

Honestly, I'm not trying to be "sneaky". I didn't mean to imply that Bitcoin has suffered from disastrous smart contract bugs like Ethereum has, or that the core Bitcoin or core Ethereum systems had ever been hacked since that time.

The hacks I was talking about were just all the numerous attacks on exchanges and users that have involved BTC or ETH getting stolen.

It's sort of tedious discussing this kind of thing on HN because there will always be some guy who jumps in and says 'Well, ACTUALLY, what about SBF and FTX!!" even though I'm not talking about that. So, I just wanted to admit there had been many other financial losses, to try to avoid all those clever people replying and telling me about MtGox or Tether or something like that, as if I didn't already know about it. Kind of like that other guy who replied to my comment with something mostly irrelevant that he wanted to spout.

I didn't have time to write that all out in such pedantically specific detail - almost nobody is reading this. So, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that I created. I was not being sneaky. You know: Sometimes, people just don't have time to explain everything in detail.

You seem like someone who is able to see this side of the argument, so thank you again for your comments.

Actually... the account model is much easier to use to get an accurate view of all balances than the UTXO model. As for rollbacks, Bitcoin had one in 2010 (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident) and a chain fork in 2013 (https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork) both decided by those who could make the decision... and accepted by a majority of nodes, same as with the ETH hard fork

I'm not so sure about understandability at protocol level, I do believe Ethereum to be straightforward but then again I've followed its progress over the years

Finally looked at both of those bitcoin events that you are attempting to equate to the DAO fork. I commented about the first one elsewhere here. The second one was indeed a chain fork, which is actually a normal and expected event in Bitcoin when miners disagree (for whatever reason) about which blocks are valid or not.

In this case the disagreement happened because of a backwards incompatible change that was accidentally made to the mining software. Nodes running the old software rejected blocks generated by the new software. The bug was fixed and miners happily stopped using the buggy version of code and the chain fork was resolved, just as designed by the Bitcoin protocol. Nodes that never ran the buggy version didn't have to do a thing.

Like my discussion of the other bitcoin fork, this to me looks like an entirely different category of event than the DAO. Bitcoin fixed a broken promise in both cases. Ethereum broke a promise in the DAO fork.

https://www.youtube.com/@Bitcoin_University/search?query=eth

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, Chuckles.

It's important to point out that the words "cryptocurrency" and "blockchain" aren't mentioned once in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

The phrases "chain of blocks" and "electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof" do appear, though. The shorter coinages came later.

(Hilariously the first google hit did not work, so I went to the second https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/training/annual... - look who's hosting that)

Why reach for crypto? My strategy would be to have a small emergency fund with a different bank. The risk of being debanked by two independent banks _at the same time_ seems lower than crypto.

Absolutely possible if you are, say, an immigrant. And will be possible in many other cases in the future.

> The risk of being debanked by two independent banks _at the same time_ seems lower than crypto.

I use 3 separate banks for this reason. But honestly, the 'reason' for dropping me might be a 3rd party risk assessment that flags something and services all three banks... Or some sort of story or hysteria that could trigger three similar systems.

Using a decent crypto currency with good practice, the biggest threat is me messing something up. And i can put systems in place to minimize this. The only issue is that most things i spend moneys on don't accept crypto and so still need banking services to use crypto. I hope this changes.

I use 5 different banks and have cash. The problem is that with the lame (primarily US driven) overreaching AML nonsense, banks will not take any risks and close whatever they don't make a lot of money on at the first sign of issues. Why would they not. What do you do if multiple/all banks closed your accounts for no reason at all outside that you are too small a fish to put an actual human on to verify the validity of the closure? Is there anything outside crypto and stuffing money and gold in your mattress?

...until they implement a system to automatically corroborate your accounts and close them all at once, which will happen, "because crime". security theater only gets worse over time. but right now you "hackers" can stop this since 99% of transactions can still be done in cash. but you won't because you're all fake.

Using Crypto is probably the #1 reason for being debanked ...

Unverifiable, untraceable money arriving into your account does not work well with AML regualations.

Sorry to hear your story/experience. This worries me because my mother, who currently resides in a SE Asian nation, is transferring some of her money to me (in the hope that she can use it when she migrates to the US).

Did Chase let you withdraw the outstanding balance in full when they closed your account? The last thing I want is to see my money being trapped in limbo state...

Yes, they sent me a cashier check for a small balance (around $1000) I left, as Chase gave me 45 days heads up for closure. However, for some people, Chase dragged out until after CFPB complaints are filed.

The case one should worry about these banks is this: you deposit a $500K check, or you got a wire for $500K; check was cleared on the sender's side. Now Chase/Big Bank holds your funds, saying that this check is fraudulent, and that bank closes your account after finding you risky (risky because of this $500k and by looking back at your account history). Now $500K is in Chase's hands, your account is closed by Chase, and Chase doesn't want to give $500K, nor does Chase want to return $500K to the original bank/sender. This is where you should file a complaint with CFPB right away. Without CFPB complaints, the fraud department at Chase, its Bank employees just give you run around for months. File CFPB complaint right away, if any bank holds your funds after 10 business days; don't listen to these employees at all.

CFPB can't force banks to reopen your accounts. Just to get your funds, file a complaint with CFPB right away, and don't trust any bank employee on getting your funds.

I'm very far from dealing with 500k personal banking transactions, but my immediate thought is that if you're doing so you're probably making mistakes. If it's revenue from sale of a company or similar, move it through escrow with your attorney. If it's a legal settlement, do the same. If you don't have an attorney but are dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars, get an attorney. If it's income from trading or investing it should likely be a transaction from a recognized brokerage which shouldn't raise red flags - and if it's a private investment, see above about an attorney.

And of course if it's business transactions, do it with a business account.

I just gave an example based on what I read on reddit, as I never deposited $500K in my life. I have no problems with banks' closing accounts, as I have accounts with a couple of local credit unions, who are nice to me.

What caused the closure? A legitimate transaction that they find suspicious. Conjunction of two issues--not sending the funds back and closing the account without releasing funds to the customer--is real 'thievery' in my opinion. Since big banks are NOT interested in resolving disputes about funds by lying to customers, better file a complaint with CFPB right away with many details and documents.

Perhaps we should stop spreading second-hand anecdotes from Reddit as authoritative examples of what can/has/should happen.

One should get an attorney if they desire legal representation, period. Otherwise it's quite perverse to be contributing to one of the main guilds facilitating this cesspool of overregulation, just in the hopes that their social status is going to make a bank think twice. And also attorneys aren't immune from this. In fact, one reason to actually get an attorney is that you want to launder some money.

Also, business accounts aren't immune from this dynamic, as per the article. It seems like you're just grasping at bureaucratic straws here in search of the just world theory. But no, the whole thing is really an accountable terrible dynamic that will continue to get worse and worse until it affects enough people that the laws change.

Wait hold up, lawyers can help you avoid the law as well?

I suspect the bar would not allow that.

You obviously can't cold call an attorney and ask for help laundering money. But if you find a money laundering operation through the proper channels, then it will likely involve a law firm somewhere that's facilitating making it properly legible to the system - setting up less-than-truthful companies, generating copious fraudulent documentation, etc. If anything attorneys' trust accounts should be receiving more scrutiny rather than less - using your account to handle money held in trust for someone else is generally something that sets off compliance department alarm bells, and for good reason (well, as good of a reason as there can be in the context of this topic).

Lawyers are not of much help when it comes to reopening already-closed accounts. Most of the time, banks will send a cashier check for whatever money left, if they close accounts abruptly. Sometimes, they give a month to move funds elsewhere. When a bank closes an account for that last check which they find suspicious--subsequently cleared by the payee bank, that's when banks give a run around. File a complaint with CFPB without any lawyer, unless of course that amount is substantial.

I agree - you don't need an attorney to file a complaint with the CFPB, and you should file a complaint with the CFPB ASAP when a bank starts pulling this crap. But the comment I was responding to was saying you should have an attorney to handle any large transaction, which I disagree with.

I wouldn't expect them to help with reopening, but if a bank is investigating an unexpected large deposit and determines that "Oh, it's coming from a law firm's escrow account" it gives at least one obvious possible explanation - and may also indicate to investigators that the account holder is someone with legal representation so don't be sloppy.

If you are buying a house with cash, you are likely to be transferring $500K+. I do not think an attorney is necessary for the transfer.

When you buy a house an attorney is likely involved, but, in any case, you're going to be transferring the 500k through escrow, not making a direct deposit or wire transfer.

I made a wire transfer to the escrow agent.

Glad to hear they gave your money back in full. I'm now really concerned. It sucks that there seems to be no accountability in the system. I get that they want to catch the folks who abuse the banking system, but if they do, they (the government and the banks) should at least set up a proper channel to give reasons and allow folks like us (regular Joe's) to file complaints. The current system seems really ripe for abuse.

If you are moving this much money regularly using these means you will be using a private bank which is a completely different experience. Maybe some people get caught in the transition to wealth before private banking but having moved significant amounts of money a few times, the banks generally do not want to hang onto it against your will.

I don't like saying this, but the Farage fiasco involved a "high touch" personal private bank, Coutts (now a subsidiary of NatWest)

He apparently made the fatal error of being both a terrible person and not wealthy enough at the same time.

Kind of amazing that doing “aaand it’s gone” with $500k that is provably legitimate is “an issue requiring a complaint to a specialized bureau” and not “a grand larceny charge from the DA.”

You get a check for the balance of your account, but they take their sweet time getting it to you.

> This worries me because my mother, who currently resides in a SE Asian nation, is transferring some of her money to me (in the hope that she can use it when she migrates to the US).

The problem is what you are describing is not exactly legal. You are acting as a money transmitter for your mother; and this might even trigger for you some complex tax obligations.

What you should do is open a Chase bank account for your mother. You already bank with the agency.

> Chase monitors your political activity

This is a big claim. It should have big evidence to back it up.

At least in the UK, NatWest debanked Neil Farage's account for his political views. Even its CEO resigned over her lying.

"19 Republican states accuse JPMorgan of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs" [1][3]. Of course, this site is not favorable to conservatives and their views. Some left activists' accounts are closed as well [2].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-states-accuse-jpm...

[2] https://nitter.cz/OccupyWallStNYC/status/1674022837084991489

[3] https://www2.cbn.com/news/us/chase-bank-cancels-nonprofits-b...

The fact that someone with a political opinion had their account closed is not evidence that Chase is monitoring all their customers' political activity and systematically closing accounts for political activity Chase doesn't like.

The same way that Chase closing a restaurant's account is not evidence that Chase is tasting the food in every restaurant and systematically closing accounts for restaurants that cook food that Chase doesn't like.

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, because, hiding behind BSA, banks can use the blanket statement "because of unexpected activity". Now you ask me to trust Banks, because they can't show that evidence to me.

I don't trust Chase as far as I can throw them. But I still trust them more than Nigel Farage.

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 for that claim.

Big claims require compelling evidence, and you haven't provided any.

So if MSM doesn't report, it doesn't exist? State the requirements of 'compelling evidence'.

You debate like that Chase email explains their reasoning.

"Compelling" evidence would be great, but SOME evidence would be nice too.

The media not reporting it is certainly not evidence, down that path lies true crazy.

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

So what alternative theory do you have for all those accounts being closed?

Risk avoidance. Extremists (!) are more likely to have dubios donors. And even if they're "normal" political figures or activists, their behaviour in public might damage the bank.

This being said this approach is a pretty wild one still, since people NEED banks, and there should be long duration till the expiration (except in cases of fraud, money laundering, ..)

Their behavior in public, such as their social media activity? Sounds like there's no disagreement here.

No, Natwest got rid of him because he is broke, and the CEO resigned for discussing his personal details in public.

Natwest's initial response was what you said: his accounts fell below a certain threshold after he paid off his mortgage. Then Farage sought info from Natwest using "subject access request". In those documents, it is "found that an internal committee had deemed his views did not align with the bank's own. This formed part of the basis for cutting him, the document showed, alongside commercial considerations." [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/natwest-meets-quart...

You are incorrect. Natwest was forced to release internal documents about the debanking of Nigel Farage under an FOI request and it is clear from the evidence that he was debanked because of his politics.

From the Guardian 30 July 2023: <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/30/uk-banks-cl...>:

"Farage used a subject access request to discover that, despite initial denials by NatWest subsidiary Coutts, his political views had played a part in the closure of his account."

> 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.

No fan of Farage, but then why was most of the document the bank produced about what he did as a politician? Farage also claims he never met these supposed thresholds.

Combination of reputational damage[0] and him being a PEP.

I believe the account closure was a business decision, but they definitely had no reason to be public about it. One good thing came out of the debacle, though: it put the spotlight on UK retail banking regulations and how they are allowed to treat customers in the first place.

Financial institutions don't like small-time PEPs. They don't net the banks anywhere near the money dictators and kleptocrats do, but are just as likely to engage in ongoing bribery due to their position in society.

0: Farage had apparently been very vocal about having an account with Coutts, and waving that thing around as a sign of ... something. For the bank, that was negative brand value.

Negative brand value is no reason to debank someone, half musicians that do drugs would give their bank a bad name. There must be a legal basis to debank someone.

I don't like Farage's opinions, and being a PEP only means "more eyes on you", doesn't mean "kick them out". 1) Now, if Coutts dropped the ball on something, shame on them. A good lawyer can get some good ££££ for damaging the client's business/etc. 2) If Farage didn't mean a minimum-net-worth.. that's another story.

Farage didn't meet their net worth requirement, which is why his account was closed. A bit like any retail banking product - e.g. HSBC advance, there can be some slack in how strictly the rules are allied. Coutts decided that since he no longer met their net worth requirements, they didn't want to continue to serve him. They may have decided to continue serving other clients whos circumstances changed though for their own reasons.

If farage had met the requirements, none of this would have happened.

> Farage didn't meet their net worth requirement, which is why his account was closed.

Not according to follow-up reports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38159768

That's not what that says. The quote from coutts is even in the HN comment -

> We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts' decision on Mr Farage's account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage

That does not say that he did meet the net worth requirements. See [0], and read the article. No outlet has retracted the claim that he didn't meet the wealth requirements which is why his account was flagged for review.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/21/bbc-amends-sto...

> and him being a PEP.

I'm a immediate relative of a PEP. And banks treat those just like they treat PEPs.

I've banked in 4 different countries with about 10 banks total, disclosed to them the fact that I'm a PEP or an immediate relative of one, and it has never, ever caused any issue.

PEP = politically exposed person ?

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

> In financial regulation, a politically exposed person (PEP) is one who has been entrusted with a prominent public function. A PEP generally presents a higher risk for potential involvement in bribery and corruption by virtue of their position and the influence they may hold. The terms "politically exposed person" and senior foreign political figure are often used interchangeably, particularly in international forums.

Best I could find.

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 threshold required to be a customer at Coutts - whose website advises its clients should be able to borrow or invest at least 1 million pounds ($1.28 million) with the bank or hold 3 million pounds in savings - was the reason for the closure.But an internal review of the bank account obtained by Farage showed the private bank's wealth reputational risk committee had said his values did not align with the bank's own.

"We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts' decision on Mr Farage's account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage," the BBC said in the corrections and clarifications section of its website.

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

You've made a jump from the article - it doesn't say it was a lie, it says that it wasn't accurate to say that Coutts decision didn't involve considerations about his political views. They're not the same thing.

No outlets have retracted the claim that he didn't meet the wealth criteria, and nobody has claimed that Coutts lied about him meeting the threshold. In fact, every outlet that I checked today stil claims he didn't meet the wealth criteria, and that the CEO resigned because she discussed details of a client's account with a journalist, e.g. [0]

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/26/business/alison-rose-natw...

Even if Farange was targeted for his political beliefs, that is independent of whether Chase monitors customers political activites. Farange's politics were a matter of celebrity.

This is a false claim.

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”?

Guess I touched a nerve.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Lower degrees of separation from right-wing militant extremist groups. Also tends to be the sorts of folk who vehemently deny structural racism exists and the irony is entirely lost on them.

Well if you want an idea of the political reasons, look for the dog that isn't barking

How many of the people waving Taliban flags or HAMAS flags in Britain have been debanked in the past month?

Googling shows (alleged) cases on both ends of the political spectrum. For example, canceling protesters in Atlanta against the "Cop City" project; https://hellgatenyc.com/chase-bank-cancels-cop-city-proteste...

Palestinian aid groups do indeed seem to be getting debanked in the UK from time to time: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jan/03/accounts.israe...

In a world where several thousand people have just been killed by an internationally funded terrorist group, I think scrutiny on groups which are (a) armed and (b) make political statements is probably justified. And the argument that "Al-Quds Weekend Rifle Club and Prayer Group" isn't allowed while a comparable Christian one is is pure unconstitutional religious discrimination.

>>In a world where several thousand people have just been killed by an internationally funded terrorist group,

Actions that have been widely celebrate by the political segment of the population that often aligns with the gun control movement.

Actions that could have been curbed if the people that were attacked where allowed to defend themselves in stead of reliance on state protection that never came, and Israel is now rolling back many of their gun control provisions rightly so...

>>I think scrutiny on groups which are (a) armed and (b) make political statements is probably justified.

I think scrutiny on groups which are armed and make clear threats of violence are justified. "political" statements is a bridge to far from me, that applies to all religions.

If you are in the US, express the desire to violently "decolonize" the US or chant "from the river to the sea" then maybe you should be investigated. If you are in the US and express the desire lynch a racial group then maybe you should be investigated.

The problem here is in the US today only one of those groups is actually being investigate. The other are free the vandalize monuments, and storm the capital with out punishment of any type where by if the other group even happens to stroll near a government building they put in prison for years.

How about some equality under the law for a change? People claim they want that but in reality they dont

> If you are in the US, express the desire to violently "decolonize" the US or chant "from the river to the sea" then maybe you should be investigated.

The original founding document of Netanyahu’s Likud party:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...

“between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty”

The moral equivalency you are attempting to draw between those 2 statements is both ignorant and asinine.

When the terrorist organizations chant "From the river to the sea" they are clearly calling for the forced removal (at best) of all Jews from the land.

A political party that calls for "Israeli sovereignty between the Sea and the Jordan" it is clearly a rejection of the "2 state solution" but that is not a call for the removal of an ethnic population from the region. One critical difference here is you can disagree with that political party, vote them out of that government even, and express full support for a 2 state solution with out being raped, or killed. Somehow I doubt Hamas would allow that.

Israeli a western democracy has an actual framework of secular law and a history of respecting the rights of people including Arabs, Gays, Women ect

Hamas is a terrorist organization that has a history of authoritarian control, rape, murder, and no framework for respecting any individual rights at all, you bow to the most draconian interpretation of Islamic law or you die.

This exactly.

People generally don't even understand what the term "free Palestine" means, even without the "From the river to the sea" part. It's not a call for an independent Palestinian state. It's a call for a Palestinian state where Israel stands.

And we all know how that would end for just about all non-Arab Israelis.

> When the terrorist organizations chant "From the river to the sea" they are clearly calling for the forced removal (at best) of all Jews from the land.

Hamas members chanting "from the river to the sea" most certainly have genocidal intent, yes. Saying "from the river to the sea" alone - as the Likud document pretty clearly shows - doesn't make you a Hamas member nor a terrorist. There are a lot of attempts to conflate "Palestinian === Hamas", but that's sleight of hand.

I'm all for wiping out Hamas. I'm quite dubious about the possibility of doing so via armed conflict.

> A political party that calls for "Israeli sovereignty between the Sea and the Jordan" it is clearly a rejection of the "2 state solution" but that is not a call for the removal of an ethnic population from the region.

Maybe, but it's certainly a call for an un-free Palestine.

(Palestinians are rightly a bit leery of removal here; recent events have seen proposals to relocate them to the Sinai (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-30/ty-article/.p... / https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/world/middleeast/israel-e...) and a government minister suggesting nuking Gaza (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-discipli...).)

"Free Palestine",as with other short slogans (see: BLM, Defund), encompasses a range of opinions. Both genocide and the two-state solution fall squarely within it.

>>There are a lot of attempts to conflate "Palestinian === Hamas"

if they did not want to be conflated than perhaps they should have accepted one of the 5 2 state solutions proposed by mutiple parties over the decades.

Contrary to your claims I do not believe Palestinian's desire a 2 state solution in any form, instead they rejected every attempt by the UN, Britain, even the Saudi's then elected Hamas to be their official government when Israel pulled out of Gaza and allowed them to self govern...

Sorry if I press F for Doubt that they want a peaceful co-existence with Israel

It is also telling that no other Muslim nation will accept Palestinian refugees, Not Jordan, not Egypt, not even Iran...

>>Maybe, but it's certainly a call for an un-free Palestine.

Correct, it is signalling that after decades of attempted compromise that maybe a 2 state solution is not really possible. This is setting aside the fact that in reality there was already a 2 state solution where by British Mandate "Palestine" was split in 2, Jordan and Israel. However in the old adage of given in inch take a mile more was demanded...

All offers for peace have been rejected by Palestine not Israel..

Even right now, a cease fire can be easily achieved if Hamas Surrenders Unconditionally, and Free's all hostages... Hell I bet a 2 state solution would even be on the table even after all of that

I bet it would Palestine not Israel that would reject said 2 state solution.

> Contrary to your claims I do not believe Palestinian's desire a 2 state solution in any form, instead they rejected every attempt by the UN, Britain, even the Saudi's then elected Hamas to be their official government when Israel pulled out of Gaza and allowed them to self govern...

Why lie like this? The Saudi proposal you mention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative) was accepted by Arafat, largely opposed by Hamas (surprise!), but rejected by Ariel Sharon.

"The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat immediately embraced the initiative. His successor Mahmoud Abbas also supported the plan and officially asked U.S. President Barack Obama to adopt it as part of his Middle East policy. Islamist political party Hamas, the elected government of the Gaza Strip, was deeply divided, with most factions rejecting the plan. The Israeli government under Ariel Sharon rejected the initiative as a "non-starter" because it required Israel to withdraw to pre-June 1967 borders. In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed tentative support for the Initiative, but in 2018, he rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians."

> if they did not want to be conflated than perhaps they should have accepted one of the 5 2 state solutions proposed by mutiple parties over the decades.

2002 above was the last concrete proposal. Half of Gaza is under 18; they've never even had the opportunity to do so.

> 2002 above was the last concrete proposal.

2008 actually, when Palestinians were even offered East Jerusalem. I seriously doubt that they'll see such an offer ever again.

Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

> In a world where several thousand people have just been killed by an internationally funded terrorist group, I think scrutiny on groups which are (a) armed and (b) make political statements is probably justified.

Only if you think the ends justify the means.

"Trust me bro" is not evidence.

Eh. I can only assume parent is referring to negative media search most financial institutions do as part of their 'know your customer' barrage of acronyms. From that perspective, anything you do that ends up on the internet and is part of a cause, could be considered political and banks do do periodic re-assessments of risk.

At least, that is the charitable interpretation.

You don’t have an ombudsman? Or something like that? Here in India we can even make them sing exact reason for rejecting credit card applications and if they just did it shoddily then they have to actually issue it. They just can’t say “internal policy” or shit like “discretion”.

Same thing in New Zealand. If you can't get something worked out with your bank you complain to the ombudsman and the bank must respond. Sometimes, even the mention of a potential ombudsman complaint is enough to grease the wheels.

In some a case going to the Ombudsman costs the bank regardless of the outcome.

In the UK the first three cases in a year are free, but from the fourth onward the bank has to pay £750 [1]. It doesn't matter the outcome is - the customer could be totally innocent or the next Bernie Madoff - the bank has to pay. A customer saying "I will get the Ombudsman involved" is heard by the bank as "if we don't make this go away right now, we will get charged £750 (plus any compensation the Ombudsman may award)". It does tend to make them sit up and take notice, I hear, presumably because banks get a lot of complaints and so a large bill.

[1]: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/resolving-...

> Regulators want to see a certain number of SAR and CTR filings

I didn't experience that when I was on board of directors.

In my personal affairs I had a checking account force closed because of their auditors - not the regulators. Rumors and myths about enforcement have internal people and contractor (compliance software) going too far. No recourse individually on this behavior.

> If they don't like you, they can close your account by simply stating that "we have an obligation to know our customers; after careful consideration, we decided to close your account".

What's really behind the decision is simply risk avoidance. It's like "firing" bad customers. The banks consider it prudent business to kick anyone who might be a problem out the door. Avoiding one criminal causing issues is worth kicking out 20 ordinary honest customers.

My close friend was scammed via interac and bank closed his account, cards, and he was banned from interac even though he was the one that got scammed. Bitcoin solves that, but Bitcoin has another issue why banks win - if you are scammed with your card - you get your money back or if you forget password - you still have your money, if you are scammed with Bitcoin - you basically lose, if you forget your password - you lose. Just depends on what spectrum you are.

Banned from Interac? They won't let them get a debit card again through any bank/credit union? Or won't let them ever send email money transfers? Won't let them ever receive email money transfers?

(Interac is the Canadian debit card system, owned by a network of banks, which has also branched out into person-to-person money transfers between bank accounts because we don't have Venmo/Zelle/etc here).

> Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people.

Banks do what the government tells them to do.

They are more than happy to launder drug money, they don't care. You think they close the account of some random person who made too many cash deposits to protect themselves from the customer?

No, they protect themselves from the government who will hit them with massive fines when they "fund terrorism".

> If a bank has 1M accounts, regulators want to see a certain number of SAR/CTR filings, a certain number of account closures; regulators go hard on financial institutions, if the latter don't follow the industry average (#SARs, #CTRs, #closures)

Oh lord, this just asks for gamification.

If there's a multi-million dollar customer and a five thousand dollar customer, who do you reckon they'd rather lose in order to reach their quotas?

Regulators fine big banks for "weak controls". To show that they have "strong controls", they have to show quantitative data. Now, every bank is engaged in one-upmanship. Since we don't have data on the number of account closures, we should look at SAR/CTR statistics provided by FinCen. Every year, SAR numbers go up by 20%; that's because banks fill SARs with "transaction with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose". Just gamify SAR reports with vague stuff.

Do you have evidence such quotas exist or that banks are competing on SAR numbers? This all seems like wild conjecture if there's nothing to back it up.

https://www.bankersonline.com/ is a place where people working for banks in BSA compliance, hang out. Based on my reading of that forum, there is a push from BSA auditors to file more and more SARs. Also, anon comments like the following from an old NYT article validate what I see publicly on bankersonline dot com. Also look at another poster's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38158017

"Banks are under tremendous pressure by regulators to file a certain amount of SARS (as a ratio of overall transaction activity, which is determined by the regulator - regulators have a secret bogey for each bank). A shortfall from the number expected by the regulators for a bank will result in the bank being penalized by the regulator as having an inadequate BSA program (even if the bank compliance staff reviewed the activity and didn’t find anything worth SAR reporting on). If the bank fights this censure for not filing enough SARs the arbiter of justice is the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) department of the FDIC or OCC. They rule in favor of the regulators over 99% of the time.) For example California Pacific Bank- a tiny bank serving the Chinese trading community with 200 customers and 500 accounts - was persecuted for more than 5 years for not filing enough SARs, it’s hearing with the ALJ is on YouTube. Even though racist anti Chinese comments by the regulators were unearthed in depositions, the ALJ ruling still went against the bank. Furthermore, banks are required to review ongoing activity of SAR’d customers and file follow up SARs if the “typology” of suspicious activity continues. Bank BSA policies have the requirement that repeat SAR subjects will need to have their accounts closed. Most banks therefore just file SARS on anything that matches a typology and close accounts- that’s just how the BSA regulatory system works.” [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/your-money/bank-account-s...

Goddam fuck that's depressing. Putting the BS into BSA.

No wonder shit doesn't work the way it should. Reporting on numbers and percentages rather than actual incidences with audit trails leading to shell companies and tax havens and opaque offshore ownership structures.

Because that takes time and effort that meaningless "numbers and percentages" don't require whatsoever.

Automation scaling is the jackboot stamping on the human face.

That sounds like the kind of idea SBFs parents push in their jobs

> not an instance of disrespecting any Chase employee either on phone or in person.

Since when is this grounds for closing an account?

See “amazon disabled account after delivery driver misheard automated message from security system” incident.

I feel sacking customers got really popular during Covid and continued after.

Many phone systems have a thinly veiled threat about zero tolerance policies, to treat staff with respect, and in the case of certain government agencies here in the UK, that they will refer cases to the police. The same is repeated on written posters in eg doctors and dentist offices

Just a coincidence I’m sure but I find employees (especially on the phone) even more condescending and unhelpful these days

Earlier, banks used to warn customers at least once for any disrespect towards employees. Now, expect big banks and financial institutions to close accounts without any warning, unless you are a wealthy client. Charles Schwab and Chase do that.

Will Chase cancel my mortgage, too?

No, they don't; however they cancel your checking, savings, business checking, credit cards. Only exception is mortgages.

This reminds me of a common scam that casinos pull: if someone gets caught gambling when they weren't allowed to be, the casino will unwind everything if there was a net win, but will leave it stand if there was a net loss.

Do you happen to know if credit unions can hide behind banking regulations? As an account holder, I also own a share in the company.

Yes, they can. At least with credit unions, they can call you for clarifications when they or their system flags your transactions suspicious. With big banks, once they find your transactions suspicious, they will send a notice to close your accounts. No human being can help you.

Do you have even a single example of a bank account being closed based on political or social media activity?

I'd be curious to know, raincom, did your purchasing history visible to Chase include ammo, firearms, donations to Trump or MAGA politicians, supplies for building an off-grid homestead?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com