Bitcoin Forum

It's becoming more clearer to me that there are people who have some kind of special access to servers handling the the interbank money transfers and who are trying to block or at least delay money transfers to Bitcoin exchanges (or at least they can dictate what kind of accounts appear in a "blocking list").

These are the reasons I believe this:

It happened to me first when I tried to do a money transfer to MtGox's bank account in France (this was in May or so while they still had their account). The money transfer did not go through and the software did not appear to register a transfer. I had to call up my bank and ask what happened. They were surprised themselves that the transfer had not gone through automatically but were able to release it manually. This actually happened twice and after the second time they send me email with the suggestion that I google the name of the recipient "Maracaja Sas" (the MtGox-exchange). The highest result of that Google was a complaint on these forums that their transfer to that bank account had not gone through. The suggestion implied was that it was risky to send this person money. I was thinking "WTF?", do the banks now check every person's reputation on the Internet whom I send money to?

I've *never* had this kind of experience with a bank in Germany and I have been using banks here for 25 years now.

Recently I've also noticed complaints by other people in Germany and Holland where banks other than mine are also making it difficult to transfer money to Intersango:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53942.20
They make spurious claims that the computers of their customers are infected with rootkits.

Note that these are different banks than mine and they were trying to transfer to a different Bitcoin exchange. The only connecting thing is *transfers to Bitcoin exchanges*. This shows a certain pattern!

All the more reason to support Bitcoin!
 :)

Heh, I think the establishment is becoming more fearful by the passing day. It's very intriguing to watch. (https://mobile.twitter.com/harveyalpha/status/146315163350474752)

Please post the names of the banks that refuse to make transfers, or that are creating difficulties.

Sparkasse (Germany) <-- my bank
ING-DiBa (Germany)
ING (Holland)
DKB (Germany)

http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2004-10-06/rothschild-takes-sole-charge-on-landesbank-deal

Sparkasse stands under the German Savings Banks Finance Group which includes the German public Landesbanks.

It seems the elite Rothschild wealth management firm is a key investment adviser to this whole shin-dig. This reeks fear from the central banking establishment all around. I can smell the resentment. Isn't it lovely?

One reason for thight controls could be phishing attacks. Bitcoin exchanges are a tool for phishing crimes - you phish someones internet bank account, and then move the money to a bitcoin exchange. Then you buy bitcoins, and nobody can freeze your money.

I suspect that some kind of phishing utilizing bitcoin exchanges has occurred in the past, and the banks have noticed this. They are careful for a reason, since the banks have to pay for the damages, even if the bank customer has been stupid and clicked some spam link.

The bitcoin economy is currently at 25 million USD. This is almost nothing compared to the funds in the largest banks and investment coorporations. I guess most executives in those big megacorps haven't even heard about or care about bitcoins.

Evidence presented in this thread is weak or non-existant, so it's all speculations.

So you really think that someone somewhere has backdoor-control to the banking system to delay or disrupt transactions that have to do with bitcoin ? That sounds extremely far fetched..

Not as far-fetched as you might think.

Most all inter-country electronic bank transfers in the world goes through essentially the ONE global clearing/settlement system.

It makes it pretty easy to do what he's suggesting. Also makes it pretty easy for the whole thing to come unstuck and send us all to monetary hell. Oh, the joys of a centralised system.

I completely agree. I don't think the banks are particularly concerned by bitcoin at the moment. They were even less concerned with bitcoin back in May when your transaction occured. I think its much more likely that the banks (or some kind of banking regulatory body) are concerned with transactions that go to suspicious sounding names like Maracaja Sas, then the fact that Maracaja Sas is the account of a bitcoin exchange.

While I don't find the evidence presented here very conclusive myself, I wouldn't discard Bitcoin because of its currently low market cap either. There are very few other technologies/companies out there which could become equally dangerous to the banking industry as a whole. The current mtgoxUSD rate which is often used in a questionable manner to extrapolate the value of the Bitcoin economy has pretty much nothing to do with that.

Where can i get Bitcoin tinfoil hat?  ;D

Ummm! Don't get mad at me, but mine's on loan to a banker.

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/UNUSUAL-FUNNY-MAN-TINFOIL-HAT-CONSPIRACY-WEDDING-PHOTO-/07/!B74En5gEGk~$(KGrHqQOKiwEzTEGN,lvBM1fzfdESw~~_3.JPG

I spend a lot of time speaking with the banks. They know what Bitcoin is but I honestly don't believe they are blocking it as an attempt to kill it at this point. The nature of Bitcoin exchanges looks suspicious on paper. I'm always very clear and transparent on exactly how our transactions occur but it still doesn't look good to have large amounts of cash moving in and then moving out to other people. For that reason alone a lot of banks don't like to deal with these types of businesses if they're Bitcoin related or not.

Their internal memos might list it as a scam, fraud etc but more importantly they list it as "high risk" which I've been told numerous times and shouldn't at all come as a surprise to anyone. Banks don't like to take high risk investments when there isn't a benefit to them and at this point.

Bottom line:
Things could be better with Bitcoin and the banks but they could also be much much worse. They're not out to get us in my opinion and I'm going to assume I spend more time with them regarding Bitcoin than anyone else except possibly Mark. He doesn't deal with US banks as much which are predictably the worst to deal with so far.

Don't forget these things can change over night too for better or worse.

Jered