Bitcoin Forum

Came across this potentially damaging development for Bitcoin today:

https://capital.com/natwest-bans-business-cryptocurrency-transactions (https://capital.com/natwest-bans-business-cryptocurrency-transactions)

NatWest, a relatively well known UK bank (out of roughly 20) has decided to ban any businesses from using its accounts for any Bitcoin related transactions. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come, if I remember correctly this bank has been caught up in a money laundering scandal in the recent past and maybe it is getting jittery - even if the general trend is towards opening up cryptocurrency related services. Banks can also be "on the hook" if companies using their facilities have not performed proper checks on their customers transactions and you could say there is a lot of hard to trace funds floating around. Do you think other banks will follow suit? If they do, will we see the Bitcoin price sink in future or can institutional money overcome these obstacles?

Maybe they bought some coinbase stock ;D (or want to) .

Banks are weird old structures that probably fear the use of cryptocurrencies as they may be able to push them out of the sector when fees become reasonable. Some banks are trying to adopt and use crypto and others just seem to be trying to make things more difficult to use.

In reality, the only people that can stop crypto have too much control over the market that they'll be forced to split (VISA). I'm not sure how far they are from an investigation into being a monopoly but I imagine they're trying to look fairly neutral to most things.

Who wrote that article on capital.com?

vs Guardian
are they really using a word spinner or what?

I wonder will they keep clients who worked with a 3rd party gateway, as they do not get paid in crypto but in £, so basically they are at no "risk" whatever that risk was, as by default business who accept payments in crypto are safe from fraudulent chargebacks or frauds with stolen credit cards to the irreversible transactions. Since they are at this point are they going to ban even businesses that accept card payments via Wirex and Binance visa cards  ;D?

Santader & Barclays have also started to close users accounts that are transacting in crypto exchanges it's also concerning that the biggest crypto card provider in the UK Wirex have also just been told to halt deposit's by UK customers by the FCA on top of that the FCA have also banned UK traders from participating in trading any type of crypto derivatives such as futures contracts ect.

The UK is becoming a very hostile place to crypto and that is a shame because all there doing is stunting the growth of a emerging market.

This is insane. Why are they doing it? Are they just afraid to lose out in the crypto war? To be honest we as consumers should not tolerate such behaviour from a bank. The bank is their to provide services to customers. Not ban services from them. What if all the crypto investors just switch to another bank? I think we have a lot of power as consumers and the banks should make services more crypto friendly.

Well so they decide to refuse the mass adopted. How ridiculous this bank can be. This only cause a bad reputation to the bank because I have heard that many crypto enthusiasts located in this country

In addition, this is the first time this bank pup up in front of me. I do not know whether they have a fine business or not but I guess they are not a big bank. Maybe it is just a local bank

Bitcoin will soon overtake many fields. Running away from it is not a solution. They have to be smarter in the era of technology

It's just a bank, although it's a blow, but it's not lethal as to what countries like Nigeria suffers, with a total bank ban, since it came from the Apex bank center, central bank of Nigeria (CBN).
I think cryp-tocurrency enthusiast won't hesitate to take other options among those banks accepting crypto-currency in the United kingdom, I think this would make the bank in question that put the bank have a rethink concerning the possibility of losing many clients.

Ouch. That's not what we all wanted to hear right now. Any particular reason why they did this? Maybe a temporary ban or something until they come up with a better solution to integrate business that accepts bitcoin? Things doesn't sound any good right now. Even Turkey issued some sort of ban on crypto currencies recently. And here I was thinking Europe is much better and advanced when it comes to accepting new technologies. We might see a little sinking of the price which will eventually balance out. Nothing to worry about. Just one single bank can't cause a huge havoc on the price.

How will they ban it? i mean in what way? Will they like ban our account if we convert our bitcoin into our currency or something? Or maybe they don't want to make a deal with company that involve or adapting bitcoin? I don't really understand. But, it's understandable banks want to ban bitcoin, since bitcoin might be harmful for their future continuation. I know banks will still be needed and important, but still they might need to accept the technology development and deal with bitcoin, not banning it again and again.

This has been done through the years a bank in the US banning businesses using bitcoin will only make businesses using them move to a new bank.  Unless its country wide sweep they are only damaging themselves.  Member when Jamie Dimon kept saying how bitcoin was crud...I member that.  How did that age?  Point is no need to worry bitcoin is too big for one bank to alter its course.

That's pretty simple. It's said they won't do business with clients who accept crypto payments so if they find out you're running a crypto exchange or have an online store that accepts cryptocurrencies, they will tell you to move to move to another bank and will give you a deadline. There were some cases of banks doing similar things.

The reason for this is probably money laundering. They don't want to be audited by agencies that trace money or whatever.

Institutions that are too small to handle some heat will avoid it at all cost.

First, Natwest don't say anything about this situation on their announcement page (https://investors.natwestgroup.com/regulatory-news/company-announcements)  so I don't know legit is the news and if it is the truth the reason behind their ban of the crypto-related transaction will definitely be their unsettle money laundering accusation but Natwest wasn't the first UK Bank to ban their business account holder customers from accepting crypto-related transactions and if you ask people from the UK or do some few research online or this forum you'll find out some banks in the UK have already don't that before now but the news about Natwest ban was known to the public because of money laundering issue
Institutional money will never overcome these obstacles but I don't see other banks with clean records follow the suit.

OP: not! These are very specific cases and are referred to AML cases (perhaps) if banks decide globally to reject bitcoin, perhaps it is not the idea of being bitcoin holders, we always think that the ideal adoption is for banks to accept bitcoin, but The reality is the forced alternative, because the main holders of bitcoin, which should be ordinary people, do not decide to take bitcoin seriously, so the institutional ones and among them the banks, on the contrary, are accommodating themselves within their poor system to give "space" to bitcoin.

Its happening now and the price of Bitcoin reacts on every bad news, we might enter now into the correction phase and starts to enter into a bear trend. Those institutions started to spread the “BANNING” issue just like what happened to 2017, its time now to go down.

I don’t think many banks in UK will follow, because I know this is just a temporary and they can’t totally ban those companies or else they’ll leave that bank and look for a better option.

They have taken precautionary measures, They are suspecting a big change may occur in the upcoming months.

Although Bitcoin's weekly chart is a bit weird now. But many big investors in the Bitcoin market are still supporting the upward movement. Till now there is a lot of support in 50K area and there is huge support at 40K area which is very difficult to break at all. I don't know what they're afraid of so much in advance where the price is constantly pushing upwards!

No, mate. I don't think other banks will follow it.
It is not the first time an issue of banning crypto. In the past, even we heard the issue of banning crypto by a big country like Russia or China. But the issue disappeared and those countries accept Bitcoin till now. And other countries weren't influenced by the bans. Regarding banning BTC or crypto by UK bank, I am sure it will be the same as the issue in the past. Even if there are one or two banks that follow it, but it won't lead to massive bans on bank banks around the world.

It is possible if the Bitcoin price drops because of this issue. However, it won't last a long time, the drop will happen temporarily. So, we don't need to worry or be afraid of the big sink of Bitcoin value in the future.

Of course they will fear bitcoin, because it is a sign that they are an obsolete financial structure and if you want to keep that power, I am pretty sure that you will do anything you can to at the least keep it at bay or until you retire and just let the obsoletion take over finally. If other were to follow suit in this shenanigans, I am sure that it will hurt crypto big time.

Yes they are afraid. If you was a bank owner, you would be afraid too. You didn't expect them to just throw you flowers while you use crypto which steals their jobs, did you? Why are you surprised? This is only one bank. Imagine how fucked up would it be when nations decide to fight crypto, like Turkey did.

An unexpected decision. The pound's liquidity cannot be compared to the US dollar or the euro, so they are managing businesses in their country with just the pound. The adoption of cryptocurrency or Bitcoin will only make managing their currency more difficult. They only hedge against the risk of losing the liquidity of the pound worldwide.

Is this the best news today?  It would be legal to officially announce it, that way they are dragging bitcoin into the war of world trade.  Even so, will it be better for us or not?  This is also not good listening around the attention OMi surrounding the curse - suing Biden with tax laws.  2 days of major casualties to the market!

No, they can freeze or cancel your bank account as soon as you do Bitcoin-related business with it. This can be transactions from crypto exchanges like Coinbase, for example. Banks are also obliged to ask where larger amounts come from (at least in the EU, but Britain is no longer a member of the EU, so this may have changed).

This is a strange policy since AFAIK UK doesn't ban Bitcoin. Why would they ban it if the government allow it? It's only crypto derivatives that have been banned.
Imagine you deposit or withdraw from exchange and get your account frozen. Not cool, not cool at all!

I wonder if there is another motive behind this decision? Hmm..

"According to a Guardian report, the bank’s head of risk Morten Friis told investors at an online event on Wednesday that NatWest has “no appetite” for dealing with customers whose main business is backed by the exchange of crypto."

The guardian is fairly reputable and there is most likely a copy of this online event recorded for investor purposes. If the head of risk is saying that they have no interest in supporting business customers who are using cryptocurrency, then that will filter through to their account management policy. They may very well be reaching out to customers and trying to handle the situation delicately as they close any accounts.



Err, yes it can. The pound is very liquid and is held in many currency baskets alongside the Euro and Dollar. Of course they will primarily manage businesses in the currency of the country they are based, how they are hedging the pound is totally irrelevant to this news. It is not totally unexpected because other banks do operate a sort of grey area and have been known to quietly shut down accounts that have been found related to bitcoin transactions.

Banks that are afraid of checking or examining their clients' data will initiate to ban crypto trading in to avoid being exposed to their activities, which may include money laundering.
Accepting bitcoin will not bring money to banking system and they may pay more money for payment fees.
bank will accept bitcoin payment using payment network as Visa/Mastercard.
I do not see that all banks take such a step. In the end, the matter varies according to the bank’s regulations and the nature of economic activities.

I think it's the best time for users to switch to other banks that accept Bitcoin transactions. This kind of bank might see Bitcoin as a treat but they should also accept the reality that most people make money with crypto these days and accepting different transactions through it wouldn't affect their reputation since they've asked for KYC which most banks do.

I think the NatWest may indeed be afraid of even more accusations and charges by the FCA, they're facing enough troubles as it is due to this money-laundering scandal. Given the situation, the NatWest bank is probably trying to make every possible effort and show that they're transparent.

Especially this is intensified by the fact, that FCA has expressed distrust towards cryptocurrencies (https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-bans-sale-crypto-derivatives-retail-consumers) many times in the past.

If all the banks should continue like that I think businesses that are related to bitcoin or that has something to do with it like accepting it as payment, will all be affected if banks stops them from accepting payments that has to do with cryptocurrency, and those that relies fully on it will run out of business since that’s what they are fully into. So, I wouldn’t like if all the banks there should do the same as this bank has done.

By the way, it’s just an ordinary bank, so I don’t think it’s anything to be afraid about, if it was coming from their central bank, then we would have known that it will be carried out by every bank, but since it is not, then they are safe.

I think they are just killing the competition... because they cannot allow some other technology to steal the limelight.. when it comes to money laundering. What will happen with their profits, if criminals stop using Banks to launder their money?  ::)

We saw other Banks in the UK also doing that in the past, but it still did not stop people from using it.  ;D Some of these Banks are still stuck in the dark ages, where they think Monopolies will survive..... not even the Royal Family can resist the changes that are taking place.  ;)

Majority of the UK banks these days aren't friendly to cryptocurrencies, as they are banning their citizens from engaging business or doing crypto exchanging from time to time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are licensed and regulated Bitcoin ATMs that they can use for depositing and withdrawing cryptocurrencies. I also believe there is no problem with P2P transactions either like in Nigeria. It looks like they are afraid that people might start moving their savings to Bitcoin.

This is real fear about the market. NatWest might have made a big investment, and the crash could've caused them a big fall in their market value. Other than this there is no big incident that has happened around for the ban of businesses accepting bitcoin. We are not sure of the internal things happening within the network.

Anyhow it is time for NatWest to loose its customers, because at the moment two out of ten people are aware and one out of the ten uses Bitcoin in some way.

A bank is a bank. It will do its best to ensure that the fiat that it keeps and creates remain relevant for as long as they like. That's why it's no new news to us to hear about banks imposing ban on people's accounts that they have found using bitcoin or using their accounts for cryptocurrency purposes. But the future catches up with everyone, and the future badly needs a new form of monetary system where the power is given back to the ones that circulate it, not the ones that hoard and keep it.

Look, this has happened in the past and is bound to happen as the mass adoption stage goes underway.

There has been various instances of this happening in banks across the world, not just the UK. Most banks, even if they don't explicitly ban the transfer of funds for the purposes of trading/transacting with cryptos, would not be particularly pleased if they found out that you trade bitcoin.

I've personally gotten my account suspended temporarily for just selling BTC on LBC for a few hundred bucks. Absolutely draconian stuff that reinforces the need for decentralisation.

How can Visa stop crypto? I don't think they could even if they wanted to considering there's literally nothing they can do to stop people from using crypto the same as they couldn't stop them from using cash. And Visa is nowhere near a monopoly. Mastercard, Discover, and American Express have far too much market share for anyone of these companies to be a monopoly.