Bitcoin Forum

Very interesting case, but it has a happy ending.  :)

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/26/sell-bitcoins-hsbc-block-account

HSBC’s anti money-laundering security alerts were triggered by the unusual sums entering your account, and the bank says it ring-fenced the money and blocked your access while it investigated. Unfortunately you were given mixed messages, for which HSBC apologises. “The funds have been returned, and the account returned to the status it held previously,” it says. “We have also credited the account with £100 as a gesture of goodwill.

"Unusual sums"!!  That is a terrible excuse .  This is precisely the type of inexcusable control banks demand over their victims.  Also, this is why crypto is so freeing!   
Thank you for a thought provoking share.
Cheers! 🦋

Banks are probably being paranoid about being used for money laundering. The government is partly to blame here, threatening harsh penalties to banks for being lax in monitoring.

From reading your post, it is clear the account was not blocked but the amount refunded. It usually happens with big somes of money from another country to a personal account in some countries.

In international transfers, particularly SWIFT transfers, the bank has to accept the incoming transaction, and in this case the bank suspected something foul and refused to accept the amount which went back to the sender. It has nothing to do with bitcoin trading directly.

Very strange. Since one of their own members of the board (and former minister of Finance) has confessed that he himself owns some bitcoin. His name is Jan Kees de Jager

Banks have to be very careful with their money laundering procedures and have to examine transactions. The banks are under the responsibility of the laws issued by the governments ..
For this reason, it is reasonable to assume that the high money traffic in the account is a phenomenon that should be considered and examined for a bank. Otherwise, the bank may face high penalties. There is always the risk of being inspected when Bitcoin sends money for the user to the bank.

Did HSBC knew the transfers were BTC-related? I guess it was some kind of software which blocked the account. That happens if you're on a fixed salary, with a sudden large transfer from a foreign unknown source. The software says it's suspicious and a human is necessary to sort things out.

They should blame the entry point service that delivers the money into the bank. Banks are being careful enough to avoid penalties. Government should also start monitoring and penalizing entry services that delivers or sends the money into the bank without even implementing Know-Your-Customer Procedures. Good Job for the Bank.

For large amounts or amounts that are out of the usual pattern of your account banks tend to treat this as suspicious and like to know where the amount came from, they need to make sure they are doing their best to counter fraud and so on but there does seem to be an issue with bitcoin transactions, this isn't the first time I have heard stories of accounts being closed due to bitcoin transactions.

I think it was just not recognized by the HSBC program as to where the money came from. Because it automatically assumed fraudulent. But still it has legal transaction record. I think it is really hard for now to make transaction from bitcoin if it is not recognized by banking programs, even if government allows it, it is not easy for banks to partner with bitcoin services. I hope their would be no more issues even if banks require more identity authorization, its ok for me as long as transaction with go smooth.

This is a very alarming news given that HSBC is an international and well known bank in the finance and banking industry. This is why Bitcoins has been available for the purpose of having free transactions with accounts not under any supervision.

In Bitcoin, no system can control or know the amount. And the transactions are just through codes or Bitcoin addresses that hides the personal information of the Biotcoin owner.

Banks always find huge or 'unusual' amounts of money to be suspicious because they are wary of money laundering and illegally smuggled money. They have many security measures and make sure that everything is clean. I agree that the system may have not recognized it and assumed it to be as fraudulent. Since most banks are not aware or are not familiar with bitcoin transactions, this made them question the 'unusual amount'. Even if it were recognized as legal in the country, banks should adopt to the increasing number of btc transactions. I think they should partner with bitcoin services so as to cater the bitcoin users. There will be more and more bitcoin users and banks should keep up with the times.

Thanks for sharing! What an eye opening experience. This is the exact control all of us are trying to escape!

Almost all exchanges which allow you to withdraw Fiat to a Bank account require for authorization to submit their applications. It seems to me that it makes no sense for the Bank to freeze your admission in order to know the origin of the money. Yet at the same time to pay £ 100 compensation. Are you sure that this story is true?

Your bank accounts will be blocked if you aren't declaring tax etc. Also some bank policies actually forbid trading in digital goods over a certain threshold every month.