Bitcoin Forum

https://i.imgur.com/6OVwtBe.jpg?1 (http://cointelegraph.com/news/114659/eu-banks-forced-to-report-bitcoin-linked-accounts-transacting-over-1000?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=EG)

An anonymous Dutch bank employee has revealed (http://cointelegraph.com/news/114659/eu-banks-forced-to-report-bitcoin-linked-accounts-transacting-over-1000?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=EG) that major banks in the EU are applying new rules forcing banks to report,
monitor or investigate accounts receiving or sending over €1,000 connected to bitcoin.

The anonymous user identifies himself as a bank employee within the Dutch banking system. Referencing a memo seen
in the bank offices, the user describes how accounts receiving more than €1,000 from known bitcoin-linked accounts
should be subject to increased scrutiny, and reported.

well it was bound to happen, but i think it's time to start to use decentralized exchange, if you still want to preserve a portion of your anonimity

and what about other coins exchanged? what if i convert litecoin instead? they will not check my transactions?

It says any single transaction, or series of apparently linked transactions over a total of EUR 1,000 must be reported.


How do they work out if a series of transactions are linked and over the EUR 1,000 limit?

It goes on to say any account receiving over €10,500 EUR a year must be reported, but not what gap between transactions qualifies them as not being linked.

Litecoin not affected  :P





(...i guess they are watching all the main currencies)

So what European banks are saying to bitcoiners: don't do business with us.

As i have posted in this forum recently... the country that is markets itself as a safe haven for bitcoin businesses is sitting on a goldmine.

you answered your first question with the second..

basically if they know the bank details of bitstamp and coinbase. then any customer who transfers to those accounts are flagged as 'bitcoin related'.. then using the same old protocols they have used for decades, (the amount flags). they filter and tally up transfer amounts to individul recipients..
thus if you transfered Eur30 each day, everyday for a year, it would tally to be over the 10500 a year being sent to a known bitcoin exchange
also if you sent Eur30 each day for just over a month, the Eur1000 flag would be hit.
its not that hard for banks to filter transactions by recipient and then total the transaction values..

the amount flags. are the same 'wire transfer' regulation amounts that the EU has been using for decades.. its nothing new.. the only difference is the 'bitcoin related' flag..

You are wrong. Bitcoin-linked accounts refers to those bank accounts which are being held by Bitcoin-exchanges and other crypto-based ventures. Even if you convert your BTC to LTC, and then sell these Litecoins to €€€€ (using Bitstamp or BTC-e), the banks will still report the cash deposit to the authorities, as it came from an account which is being held by a Bitcoin exchange.

crazy shit... good read!

In France the 1 000€ limit in cash is also about Electronic payment system such as Bitcoin: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000030784456


But lel fuck them.

Yes but this limit is not for Bitcoin (Bank of France said (http://www.bitcoin.fr/post/Banque-de-France-%3A-Bitcoin-n-est-pas-concern%C3%A9-par-le-d%C3%A9cret-limitant-le-paiement-en-esp%C3%A8ces)).

It is interesting to see that banks are attaching enough importance to Bitcoin to track such transactions separately.
What they probably don't realize that if somebody really wants to hide his Bitcoin tracks, it is very easy to do so.

well i guess this was expected of them. and i would be very surprised if other countries especially US banks don't monitor their customer's accounts for bitcoin related purchases.
with all the criminal activities that were associated with bitcoin, they have to do that.

damn with all this monitoring going on you feel like there nothing you can do with out them knowing anything, no sense of peace in either the internet, economy or life, bitcoin for then most be really scary to have set such a low number of 1k euro.

I spoke to a Bank manager friend of mine about this a few months ago, and he acknowledged that any amount bigger than €1,000 that are being deposited into a bank, are being flagged. It standard practice for fiat cash too. {They then target the user with phone calls to invest it, into other products provided by the banks}

Some of this information is also given to the Tax authorities {Well acctually they are linked automatically}  :(

I would not be too worried about this... It looks to be linked to standard AML/KYC practices.  :(

 

Agree with above poster, this has been standard practise for fiat in most countries and banks.

Just one of the ways used by the tax authorities to collect data on people and by doing so to build profiles which are then matched to the submitted tax returns. These profiles help them to flag discrepancies which are then investigated. An example will be where a person for example declares a gross income of say $10,000 for the year yet the data available shows he has received deposits amounting to over $100,000.....

The post has been taken down... Is this news true or just based on rumors? If it's true, that's just a shame...

Exactly. It states "connected to bitcoin", without any definition of that. Litecoin is connected to Bitcoin, and usually trades in similar exchanges.
Anyone thinking that their altcoin will save them from this is just deluded.

The post looks like it is still down. I'm not sure how credible "An anonymous Dutch bank employee" is. Without an official statement from related parties this might be completely false.
However, I do see this being quite possible. Luckily for anyone who wants to avoid this, there are always cash transactions. Use localbitcoins and sell when you want to.

What else interests me is that it states sending or receiving more than €1,000. Does this include one time transactions that are bigger than €1,000 or the total sum?
In the first case one could easily cheat them by sending smaller amounts.

Simple way around this - Just sell BTC for cash on localbitcoins in face to face meets. Set up a faux business like a car wash or taxi driver & launder your cash through that. Obviously declare whatever little amount you want to ;D. They'll never know you have anything to do with BTC.

There are always ways around every rule, as long as you're not selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of BTC a year & trying to launder it all you should be ok.

The news report is true. If the news itself is true or not, I don't know... meanwhile I've found the post where the news originated from (https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/3aq5x3/warning_vendors_for_european_vendors/). As you can see it's marked as speculation. so let's just take it with a grain of salt.

If they use that information in a bad way for their customers, the customers will simply start buying bitcoins more locally, which will in the end benefit bitcoin
because they won't be able to enforce any more rules to that kind of market, but on the other hand, it will also lower the amount of people investing in it.

Are there any measures that are enforced upon users that have bitcoin linked accounts?
I fall into the category also, but did not receive nor observe anything out or ordinary on my account,
and when i called my bank,they stated that they are not monitoring bitcoin related accounts. They do however have the anti money laundering points that they are reporting tho.

cheers

it is because of money laundering that they are doing this, nothing else, and as long as you are recieving funds in your bank account, you can be tracked back easily, they don't trakck you only if your amount is so small that they will not bother with it

i think the time is near to start to use bitcoin directly and get rid of this problem altogether

As long as you also have outgoing transactions (is buying bitcoin), you should be fine I guess.. If you start receiving yins of fiat out of the blue, ofcourse you are flagged..

I've read that after you've posted it. That doesn't tell us anything, however there is no harm done if we consider this to be true. We should always be extra careful when it comes to Bitcoin anyways.

Transactions lower than 1k are being flagged? That wouldn't even make sense, else everything related to Bitcoin would be flagged. They don't have the resources to investigate so many people, probably not even close.
I don't think that you've understood this properly. Mixing Bitcoin isn't going to help you as they are going to be closely watching your account on the exchange itself.

Even lower transactions are being flagged. The sender and/or receiver is also monitored. Of course they look at the amount but they also look at who/what you are sending receiving money to/from.

Banks nowadays have a pattern recognition fraud protection system: if they find something new/strange/misterious they'll call you.

It happened to me with my uk bank.

Better watch out

wow this is going to crazy, hopefully they dont turn having 1,000 euro in your bank account illegal if you sold your bitcoins, is this the type of behavior from banks and governments that will destroy trust with the population.

does anyone know what are the steps after your transaction is flag in order to get your money back ? paper work?

I had a huge deposit after I sold 2 years ago, to a newly created bank account. Nothing happened.
I guess this just depends on where you are from. However, something is definitely up when you start receiving thousands and thousands of euros from Unicredit banka Slovenija d.d.. (or other, depending on exchange) :D

I don't think that a normal flag would block your funds. However, if their fraud protection system picks you up then you might have to do some explaining.
I wouldn't know the exact procedure, as it is probably different in each country.

I had to go in branch to solve the issue. But I never used the word bitcoin...

I think they a system that adds up all the deposits you get each month, and if their combined total is over 1000 Euros, then your account is flagged. It's to stop people avoiding the 1000 Euro limit by trying to trick the system with numerous small deposits.

To be honest this is nothing out of the ordinary for financial institutions. Paypal does something similar. I got a letter recently stating because I'd withdrawn over 1k euroes over x amount of months I had to send them ID or some other bullshit.

so most likely they would flag you using their normal standard based on their protection systems, i thought some of this banks had a direct method now to flag bitcoin users, at lease is not a direct ruling against bitcoin users but those who are openly doing big bitcoin moves, which still fucked up.