Bitcoin Forum

What if a bank closes your account for trading with Bitcoin? what will happen to your money and what will the cons of such thing happening (except for losing your bank account which could be seen as positive)

Then you move your money to bank in other country, that dont block BTC
believe me, there will be always free countries

So you will receive your money back regardless? I was worried that they might just hold onto it. What's the most friendly and best bank for Bitcoin business?

They can't take your money. But yes, people have had accounts closed in association with bitcoin businesses.

At least that's good news..I'm not familiar with the laws of banks and whether they could take it or not.


Is there anything else bad about getting the account closed? do they share that information with other banks etc? anything to do with  credit rating?

Hmmm. good question.I don't know?
And I was thinking of U.S. banks. Who knows what would happen if you had a North Korean account.  :D

and exchange SEPA (wire) activity ... too (eurozone)  ::)

I guess I'll go and contact some of the banks and see if any of them are Bitcoin friendly.

You don't need to exchange your Bitcoin directly to your bank account.
It's much better, in my opinion, use exchangers, so that your bank can't find out origin of your money.

I don't really agree with exchangers because of the history of most exchangers and most exchangers don't allow buying from the UK I'll be using localbitcoins bank transfer and hopefully meeting up locally eventually.

Use a offshore bank..I'm not sure which banks are friendly and which are not you might want to search around the internet on the subject.

Instead of trading the BTC for fiat back and forth like a madman to make profits, why not just go FIAT->BTC and stop worrying about banks messing with your money?

Hopefully I'll be in the position to do this in a few months I would love to do it at the moment I still have things to pay in fiat

I can only speak to my experience with a major US bank and Coinbase, with which I have made regular buys and sells for over 1 year now. Before that I simply bought BTC with cash directly from miners or anonymously through Bitinstant.

As long as you're not doing huge volume and its for your own personal investment, they shouldn't bother you.

Start selling BTC online and having randoms making cash deposits to your personal checking account, might raise a red flag.

They can't confiscate your money, which is a good thing about being with a fiat bank.  On the other hand if it was a BTC "bank," unregulated, you never know what could happen, heck they could take your BTC and you probably would have no way of getting it back. 

It's not illegal to deal with cryptos, some banks might not like it but it's not like selling drugs where the police can take it.

Luckily one of the main reasons Bitcoin is used is to stop using banks and there is no Bitcoin banks in existence..or if there is they have got it all wrong.

I think I'm still going to contact some banks and see what their view is on Bitcoin and maybe make a list of banks who are pro and who are con.

If the OP had a NK bank account he would likely not even be able to get on here. The internet is highly censored when people can get on (most people can't), and it is even difficult to access TOR in NK.

They can frozen your account if they suspect of irregular activities, and migh take some time until your money is de-frozen by justice.

So better pick a bank that doesn't hate bitcoins

Open several accounts and spread your transactions across the accounts. The advantages:

1) The volume of transactions per account becomes lower and less likely to trigger some bullshit "suspicious activity" threshold.

2) If one account gets shut down you can still continue operating your business with the other accounts while you take your time finding a replacement for the one that got closed.

you always can sell it to a particular
and we hope that in the future we all are able to pay with bitcoin in any shop
also,we have available tools like xapo

You should get your money regardless of the reason your account was closed, they do not have any rights that I know to keep your money because your account was closed for trading bitcoins. To avoid anything like this happening though I would consider choosing a bank that will not take this kind of action.

If bank closes your account you are screwed.

Typical bank scam: They look for ANY reason to close your account and not refund your money.  BTC is a great excuse for them to STEAL.

I have not used a bank account in 20+ years.

This does not happen in the US.

There are law in place to protect consumers/customers.

This is good advise... from personal experience a non friendly btc bank gave several "notices" that the account would be closed... after awhile I simply withdrew funds and moved them to a credit Union (less likely to be anti coin)...
Once the banks realize that they don't control the market they will change their tune real quick... the first few btc friendly banks (or exchange houses) will reap huge benefits = game changers :^)
We're just getting started... don't let the old school corrupters influence what is a positive revolution.

Hi MakeBelieve, I'd definitely be interested to find out which banks in the UK are bitcoin friendly so if you do some research I hope you'll share :)

for bitcoin is still good in the world I think there are many banks that accept bitcoin and safe :)

so do not worry about it :)
My prediction bitcoin will last long :)

There is nothing you really can do. You can try to appeal the decision or if this does not work then you can speak to the branch manager's boss (and continue speaking to their boss, and their boss until you are confident that you are unable to get the result you are looking for or get the resolution you want).

The only thing you really can do is to take your business elsewhere.

The bank has no rights to keep your account closed for this reason. I am not 100% sure but I think you should be fine.

Agree. Banks are traditionally scared of anything they don't understand. Some banks, don't remember by name right now, have made it clear that they will not associate themselves with any bitcoin business.