Bitcoin Forum

Just read a post in "Newbies" where a Danish person was rejected by BitStamp for unacceptable documents to verify opening an account.

A friend of mine today told me he could not transfer funds from his Australian bank account to his Thai bank account without completing reams of paperwork, which will take weeks.

I have been waiting nearly six weeks to get funds transferred from Turkey to Thailand, both accounts in my name.

I could go on with a few more examples.

All this cr@p is due to money laundering laws, AML.

The sooner banks, US government and their allies crash and burn the better off we will be.

I wish I had crystal balls to see the future with BITCOIN ruling the world and everybody can live peacefully without the fear of bombs being dropped on you because you disagree with other dominant governments.

It is always the good people, the majority, that are penalised because of the bad minority.

banks still exist, but adapted to suit new models. In Sci-Fi, time is the unit. In real, banks never die, they just make stronger with bitcoin and gold. There is one question, When the last gram of gold is found, how would this be?

+1


The other day I got a letter from my bank (business account), they proposed that they will charge my accounts with 208% of the transaction fees paid in the period of jan-apr 2013...A few days later they have decided not to do that and apologized through the media.

I got so many frustrating experiences with banks, I think they are obsolete and I really hope that I'll see them go out of business.

i love these stories.

people insulting the banks, but the crucial thing these story tellers keep forgetting...

if they truly didnt need banks and truly felt banks disapearing would be great..................... why do these story tellers even have bank accounts in the first place to complain about.

the moral of the story is that until you are not reliant on a bank and open up your mind to other methods.. banks will survive.

Because you need money to live :D

The current system is "enforced" and mandatory for everyone.

You cannot escape it without becoming a homeless wandering on the streets or lowering your living standards significantly.

You don't need money to live. And even if you decided to use money you could (still) use "unbanked" cash.

However it's much harder to live without banks because most people rely on their services. It is dictatorship of the majority for the disadvantage of the majority. ;)

ya.ya.yo!

These story tellers have bank accounts in the first place because the law compels them to use the banking system. In most 1st world countries there are many types of transactions (especially between businesses) where one has to use banks or be forced to pay fines (and sometimes even go to jail).

"Opening my mind to other methods" would require me to be able to afford to overthrow my government. Even Satoshi with all his BTC wouldn't be able to afford to do so.

Because their bosses won't pay their wages cash in hand.

Not to mention the politicians and groups who lobby against cash and offshore banking. It's their interest to have complete control over money and their sheep.

Sadly, most often we have no choice anymore. It's getting next to impossible to pay for utility bills in cash. Some companies even ask for a hefty charge if you don't want to pay by direct debit.

BTC's our only hope!

Financial facism, welcome to the 21st century.

Much of this is due to authoritarians who wish to control everyone else imposing rules via threat of government force to put them in jail otherwise.  The banks are the victims here too.  Certainly there are individual bankers who are part of the authoritarian establishment or who are corrupt etc, but it is not a necessary prerequisite to banking that they have all these hoops you have to jump through.  There would be a lot of banks who would allow anonymous, no-document banking if there were not laws against it.

Prior to all the AML/KYC rules, banks were very good at protecting privacy, and keeping your business to themselves.  Just look at the Swiss banks (and others of course) who were extremely good at it until the busy-body, power-hungry politicians wanted more control to tax people to death. For hundreds of years in fact.  Now those banks face the choice of either huge fines and jail OR following what the politicians require.

Ditto for customers when the governments require that you don't use cash or whatever.  The people who should be blamed are the people who want to control others "for their own good."  Well, frankly, I don't need anyone telling me what to do "for my own good" and most people don't need it either.  But the busy-body control freaks what the power and the money from the taxes they can get from having that power.


Crystal balls need a really good cup for rough sports, by the way.  ;-)

Edit:  I agree "Financial fascism" - enforced at the point of a gun.  No better than any one of a number of "isms" that require force to implement.

The whole monetary system banks have created is a complete scam

+1 Even worse in some cases their employers insist on a prepaid debit card that then extorts the employee with usurious fees. The latter is becoming a very serious problem in parts of the United States.
 
My take on this is that the war on cash in many 1st world countries is having a particularly detrimental effect on the poor and lower middle class. A very simple example is payroll. 50 years ago many employers would pay their employees in cash. The cost of handling the cash was the responsibility of the employer. Today many of the same employers will pay by cheque or even worse a prepaid debit card. The cost of handling cash is now passed on to the employee either in the form of a fee to cash the cheque at a cheque cashing store or fees on the debit card.

I do not begrudge the banks at all, they have their place and actually do a very good job in many cases of meeting the needs of the upper middle class and the wealthy. Where they fail is at the bottom of the income scale, where it is very difficult for them to break even let alone make a profit from these customers without charging exorbitant fees. Let us not forget that the cost of AML / KYC compliance to the bank is the same regardless of whether the customer has a net worth of 1,000,000 USD or 10 USD. The profit opportunity for the bank on the other hand is very different.

The reality is that cash and now Bitcoin are by far the most cost effective solutions at the bottom of the income scale.

As long as they're honest, banks have actually always played a legitimate and fair role in society, the problem is now you have things like the interest rates being fixed to below 1%, they're receiving infinitely printed money from central banks and they lend money to people who couldn't pay them back in a million years, I suspect quite literally in some cases, look at the ridiculous governments bonds for an example, granted banks won't be involved in the ones publicly traded as much but certainly in private.

These are good points. Also there is the fact that small to medium size businesses provide 70-90% of the economic activity and employment in many countries. Stifling the cash economy to such an extent is effectively killing economic activity at the bottom end of the scale. It might not look like you are stopping much, since who cares about $1-$1000 trades ... well if there are millions and billions of small cash trades then even small disruptions of the cash economy inevitably lead to less economic activity and growth for the wider economy.

I'm quite sure if they rolled back all these insane cash restrictions and printed larger denomination notes again (e.g. $500, $1,000 and $10,000 dollar bills) then the economy would grow significantly ... oh wait, the terrorists might win if the economy booms?

Man if Ron Paul had been elected we would probably have had the choice to pay our taxes with bitcoins.
What a shame.
http://uboachan.net/mado/src/1336764171683.jpg

I already transferred away my coins from Bitstamp, they screwed up with this verification thing.

Can't really blame BitStamp, they have to comply otherwise they will not survive.

It is all very frustrating.

I think the biggest issue people have with banks these days, is lack of privacy.

If you see some of the characters that work as bank tellers these days..... wow is all I have to say.

I try to use bank tellers as little as possible. They are always trying to cheat the customer at the teller window; short changing, and all kinds of tricks.

I have had at least three tellers try and steal from me in the last 4 years.



Lack of trust with today banks, no good.

+10 dude ^^

the only thing banks are doing is screwing the people...i wish theyre lives will be miserable someday..

I wish... Banks could give more interest
I wish... Banks could give me more credits
I wish... Banks Would Curl Up and Die

http://markleeis.me/images/posts/boy-that-escalated-quickly-1.png

On the interest part I find it funny that I earn 0.02% on a "savings account", on the other hand the bank lends out my money and charges 30%+ on it.

Credit? I think we can all agree that mortgages and credit are only work for rich people ;)

Patience fear not, let them fear us.

in europe private banks get money from the ecb (central bank) for less than 1% interest. when entire economies/countries/societies like the greek or the portugiese want money the have to beg those private banks and those private banks give it to those countries for 8 or 10%. the ecb will not lend money to countries, only to private banks.
but they say it is a "national debt crisis"

Anti-laundering laws are in themselves illogical and the term is essentially a dysphemism, laundering being any funds not reported to the government and/or acquired by illegal means (illegal usually involving the denial of your rights to your body and consumption of any substances you see fit by, yours truly, the babysitting government that will prescribe amphetamines to your 8 year old child)

Terrorism is also a myth, it simply does not exist, and even if it does it certainly isn't popular on such a sheer scale to encourage such global measures, the ultimate aim of "anti-terrorism" is to prepare for handling problematic citizens with inhumane ruthlessness or to gain other financial advantages by means of brutes.

Every time I hear an American speak up against terrorism it's like hearing a Nazi SS commander speaking against the imaginary leftist communist jews trying to take up the world...

Not all of us are in that group.

Continual dissatisfaction caused me to move my accounts to smaller and smaller banks over the course of several years, until finally I walked away entirely and never looked back; I've been bank-free for at least 5 years now. Ironically, with the various laws and controls around banking that have cropped up, I doubt I could get another bank account now if I wanted to. Fortunately, I don't want to.

So yes, living without a bank account--provided a few crucial services, like a mortgage in your own name, aren't needed--is possible. If you work off the books, or have a small business with an alternate money management setup, or get a paycheck from a company with an account at a local bank, it doesn't even have to be difficult.

Is it more costly? Yes and no. I don't have easy access to some of the money-saving features I used to (direct deposit, complimentary debit card, a "safe place" for my money, etc.) but at the same time I don't pay a lot of the costs I used to either (various bank fees, errors and bad bank policies that cost me money; loss of privacy; having accounts frozen or not having access to funds/services as needed, etc.) Plus, the experience paved the way for me to be pretty open to the idea of being my own bank with bitcoin.

I guess the question is, do we really want financial freedom or not?



Yup. I've witnessed this before myself (I *think* it might still go on in some businesses in the U.S.) If businesses can pay you in cash perfectly legally, even if they simply stamp and cash out your paycheck themselves at the office, why don't they? Because they don't have to, because it saves them money (at your expense,) and because the entire system is encouraging it... and now everyone else is adopting the "anti-cash" perspective too. Telling your employees they have to get paid via a prepaid debit card is pretty much financial coercion; I've seen the fees and restrictions, and they're deplorable.



Take it from an American, to many of us it sounds that way too. And their obliviousness to how they sound is the most frustrating part.

"Take it from an American, to many of us it sounds that way too. And their obliviousness to how they sound is the most frustrating part."




+1

My earlier posts can show I'm no friend of the banking sector, but I shall remind a few here that banks can help sometimes. I've used a bank and I shall be forever grateful to that bank when I got a loan which enabled me to buy my home.

I'm all in favor of BTC but we may all need credit sometimes. Only banks have been able to provide it so far.

+1 again... People regularly disgust me.

That may be true, but when it comes to the banking industry I think it's pretty difficult to be too harsh on it.

Not only does the modern monetary system (implemented by, controlled by, and profiting the banking industry) rob us all of wealth regularly, requiring society to take out more loans in the first place, but the restrictions on who can and cannot legally loan, and at what rate, as determined by the banks themselves (aka: regulatory capture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)) reduces competition. Without modern banking, you likely would have been able to get the loan anyway, but at a lower rate!

And beyond that, it's not like bitcoin will ever eliminate all banking... hopefully it'll just shut down the modern-day, restrictive, oppressive kind.

>>>The sooner banks, US government and their allies crash and burn the better off we will be.

whoa, whoa, whoa, I haven't even enrolled in my local prepper group yet. :-)