Bitcoin Forum

Hi there. Just wanted to inform you all that my Barclays bank account has been frozen and it is under review, because I was using it for trading on localbit coin. I have noticed that since when I started using Pingit they blocked my account. Can they do that?

They can freeze your account for many reasons. A friend of mine had his bank account frozen for suspicious activity. He was depositing many small denomination US currency into different ATM machines throughout the city between the hours of 3:00 and 5:00 AM every day. I know, pretty suspicious huh. What was he up to? He was a taxi driver. The account freeze caused checks to bounce along with insufficient fund fees. Each night he would lease the cab to go to work. But since his money was frozen by the Department Of Homeland Security he was unable to work. He got it all sorted out with the bank after a couple weeks.

I suspect Barclays UK is hostile to Bitcoins.

Barclays have now blocked my account for buying coins from local btc and I mean only 0.3 coins !

I transferred online to seller on localbtc and then it just locked my account I don't think the sale went through but I can't know I didn't mark the transaction complete on localbtc because I wasn't sure if it was debited from my account or not so hopefully it hasn't gone through.

It's just my personal account too and I don't even sell coins I never have I just purchase litrally maybe a coin or so a month at the current rate of roughly 370 so I hope this isn't going to be a big saga with the fraud department and take days to sort out as I haven't done anything illegal and I'm not even trading! Absolute bastards, does anyone have any advice on the best thing to say when I contact the fraud department when I phone tomorrow to get it unlocked? Should I not mention BTC at all and just ask why my account was blocked and then if they ask just say the truth that I purchase them to donate to wikileaks? Do you think they will still let me or is that it now?

I've heard RBS are quite OK with BTC but it looks like the UK banks are starting to turn on them....

I would start by asking why my account was blocked, and adjust/adapt depending on what they say.
The truth is good, but you don't have too give away too much info.


“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” ― Ron Paul

Play it by ear
Disclose as little as possible

Take a look at the Barclay's 'staff'. They are either movie stars like Meryl Streep or politicians. It's bogus and you're going to lose in the end.

Is there an update?
What happened to your frozen status?

Were you breaking state money transmitter laws?  You could have been very easily depending on the amount you were selling on localbitcoin.

Someday Bitcoin tolerant banks will find they have more customers.
There is power in large numbers.  :)

They block your account ? Well just move to different much better banks there are out there. Banks already have too much power over it but this one is too much.

While it is for sure possible to open another account with a better bank, it sickens me, that banks can dictate us what to do. That is wrong on so many levels..