Bitcoin Forum

I keep reading about bank accounts in the UK, US and EU being frozen due to crypto associations. This is concerning me, and I am reluctant now to use any exchanges to purchase Bitcoin. However, I am happy to purchase crypto via P2P transactions. These can be either cash payments in a face-to-face meeting, or by bank transfer to a trusted person's personal account. Will this be the future of Bitcoin for us mere mortals, or will sanity prevail and allow us to return to using exchanges?

Now, what about crypto-to-crypto exchanges? Will government oversight and intervention restrict those. This could lead to decentralised swop services, and surely this is contrary to the wishes of the banking puppet masters?

I do not like face to face trading because it is dangerous. In the country I am, I have to avoid it.

This is how crypto was before. But people just like what is centralized because of their ignorance. Some people will argue with you that the centralized exchanges are regulated, unlike the opposite ones. They will not care about privacy. Most people of this world have ignorant thinking until they fall into a problem. Some people will even be ignorant because of lack of information about how it should be.

There are some decentralized exchanges and swap services already and people are using it with tor.

P2P has always been the best option for Bitcoin to fiat exchange and even exchange for one crypto to another especially when trying to avoid KYC.It was because of its easy and efficiency most exchanges  quickly copied it and added a KYC feature to make the lane man feel safe thinking their data is 100% safe with them like most exchanges usually say.

As for this crypto enthusiast are all putting hopes that Bitcoin will be fully accepted by major world countries. Especially
in countries where the government view it as totally illegal. Also I believe it's already taking a positive turn since some countries have fully legalized it. In my opinion I believe decentralization is the reason why most governments are refusing to legalize Bitcoin in their countries.

Probably it will, I've heard many Nigerians said their banks restrict crypto transactions, which force them to trade via P2P. If banks keep restrict crypto transactions, it will make people not to mix crypto and banks, but it only works if the demand is really high.

While some people might think to stop invest in cryptocurrency because they're afraid.

Yes Largest DEX receives wells notice from the SEC (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5492378.0)

It makes them fee safe but they can still be scammed. Decentralized exchanges scams are avoidable.

I do not think there is any major countries that did not accept cryptocurrency. The countries that do not legalize crypto do not also legalize gambling. They have this wrong motive against crypto. You can see these countries in Northern part of Africa and also countries like Saudi Arabian and Qatar in Asia.

Peer to Peer transactions and trades are good for privacy but people will need to have deep knowledge on how this trade type works and how scammers can exploit it to scam naive newbies.

It is for everyone to use but with newbies, they will need to be very strong mentally to avoid any pressure from scammers to release coins and so on.

Most of people will choose convenience than privacy and if it is not mandatory, no other choices available, they will choose things that can bring convenience, not privacy. I don't expect banking restrictions will increase P2P transactions too much.

The truth is, alot of these government are scared of what might happen to their economic status if they accept or legalize crypto. Similar to what happened in my country Nigeria months ago, when our currency had depreciated alot towards the dollar. The government started raising fingers and began a race and fought back against crypto and crypto exchanges claiming that they were the cause of sudden fall of naira. Few months before all those drama, they had said to have removed the restrictions they placed on banks as regards crypto then suddenly they had another reason to fight against it.

From what we saw just few weeks after the fight against crypto exchanges, our local currency gained a lot of value once more. So we can't actually blame the government of such countries, they might be right to some extent. But if they are able to regulate crypto and probably assume to work together,  It will cause a major flaw in the main idea about decentralization which many crypto like Bitcoin was initially created for.

Will increasing banking restrictions lead to a rise in P2P transactions?

Definitely. This same situation played out in Nigeria sometime 2 years ago, IIRC. The government baned banks from directly getting involved with Crypto transactions, so you could not fund your exchange wallet directly from the bank of withdraw directly to it as you could do before. After banks were restricted there was a sharp rise in P2P transactions and the Nigerian market quickly became one of the largest for P2P services.

Same scenario will play out anywhere else that has ardent Bitcoin users. Only the threat of government intervention in many places already grows the P2P market.

Peer to peer is good and will be the best if any form of scam can be avoided which is not possible.
Face to face peer to peer is very risky because one can be set on trap and can be rubbed all because of trust. On the other hand, one can also be scammed if there is not a trusted person to stand as a middleman to make sure the transaction is done with any cheat because people can be funny at times, they can decide to go away with people’s money because they are anonymous.

I like exchanges p2p because the exchanges are the excro to make sure there is no scam in any end, but I never tried any decentralized p2p so I don’t more about that, but I feel more safer with CEX p2p.

It will force you on to a regulated exchanges and make you consider your old invest to be play money.

Second round is laundry! Hence the ETF's.

Many people are used with CEX, so i don't expect there'll major rise in P2P trading. It's more likely people will try to create bank account on different bank or even off-shore bank which doesn't forbid cryptocurrency-related transaction.


Some P2P/DEX such as Bisq require deposit to reduce scam possibility. As for physical or face to face P2P, you also could reduce the risk by bringing people you could trust.

Problem is you don't know what kind of laundry the p2p provider is involved in. If they also work for Hamas.

I never tried any of them that’s why I made it clear, but Bisq is mostly recommended here in the forum I can see so many forum users are making good reference to the exchange.

On carrying your trusted people along; I think it is a good idea but stressful, and there is no privacy in it again since you have to take people along to make sure you are also safe.
Nevertheless, it is safer than exposing your privacy in CEXs.

I do not like face to face trading or transaction too because I see that there can be some dangers in it especially if you are not comfortable with the business environment where the trade is ongoing, physical trading and transaction can be a bit risky. I also won't like the idea of cash transactions or trades too because of the insecurity that comes with it most especially when the persons involved are unfamiliar with another.


I do not know why government is strongly working against the P2P exchanges within the cryptocurrencies community in a decentralized system. Will the reason be the government's interest to continue to control the financial sector within the crypto platforms which has been impossible to achieve or what exactly

I doubt P2P and DEX is popular choice, especially due to low volume and worse exchange rate. In addition, U.S. treasury recently also share their finding that cryptocurrency is rarely used by such group[1].

[1] https://beincrypto.com/us-treasury-clears-crypto-terrorism-financing/ (https://beincrypto.com/us-treasury-clears-crypto-terrorism-financing/).

"Blessing in disguise". I would like to hope that these events will push the development of the crypto sphere back on the right track, otherwise these centralized exchanges turned out to be overly influential, which is not at all beneficial for decentralization.

This can't help but worry. But this may be the beginning of a trend change (avoiding exchangers) towards P2P.

Like at the dawn of the era of bitcoin? I didn’t notice the abundance of users on Bisq. Maybe account freezes will have a beneficial effect on their user base?

From the point of view of the “purity” of the transaction without traces, “cash payments in a face-to-face meeting” looks the best, but there are concerns about who might come to the deal? An armed robber out to pick your pockets, or a peace officer out to arrest you (if crypto is illegal in your country). In some cases, this may be the same person.

A "bank transfer to a trusted person's personal account" can also be blocked, right?

I would prefer exchangers, but without KYC. Is such a future possible? It seems to me that no.

It seems to me that this cannot be regulated: an anonymous address (token #1) sent to another anonymous address (token #2). But what’s the point of this if you can’t buy much in the physical world with either token #1 or token #2? This will require money from the traditional monetary system.

Decentralization is wonderful and any problem that arises always forces us to look for solutions. I would like it to be the same in this case. Because of this, the problem that has arisen will push the crypto community to create new (or improve old) convenient P2P exchange platforms.

There’s no surprise that exchanges are getting regulated if it is a centralized one. As we all know centralized exchanges usually asks for their clients’ kyc and they have actual access on to your funds. This means that if they deem something suspicious they can prevent you from making any transactions.

This goes of course with banks. You can never expect decentralization with banks no matter what hoops and loops you go through. Just use decentralized exchanges and you should feel safe and confident that your account won’t be frozen all of a sudden.

It seems like we really need to exclude banks in our overall crypto transactions because this won't look good for us if we don't start to adopt new means of trading our bitcoins in the future because they are developing some strategy to further compress our freedom in the crypto industry. Just because we often use banks every time we cash out our bitcoins, they found a way to restrict us and now that they see it work perfectly for them, they will continue to further regulate more laws in order to make us follow whatever they want concerning our bitcoins.

Everyone I knew are using P2P transactions today but the face to face way of selling Bitcoin is too dangerous, do not engage in such transactions and do not advice anyone to do the same, it is very dangerous.

P2P is not even a true P2P today, you need to make sure that the platform thats providing this P2P service is not a centralized exchange like Binance and others, where Data and KYC verifications are been saved and can be leaked at any time to the government if they are asked to provide this information.

A true P2P platform will never ask you for any sensitive information, like identity details or location and addresses, if the banks are blocking their citizens then it might be the time for people to start using P2P  and also learn the difference too.

Make sure you avoid bad P2P platforms, many are centralized, avoid them.

Anything is of possibility at these times. It could be how they react because it's known that we're entering into the bull run so that's a way for them to at least get some control. But, no matter what they do, each of us will still find a way to transact and deal even without the intervention of the traditional processes that we've used to do.

All that you've mentioned Jet are the choices that all of us have got, the p2p platforms you know can also be dealt into scrutiny by the government. It's every platform now that can be questioned by them.

If there are some merchants and OTC platforms that are a separate entity from the banking industry, you'd go for them. But just as how dangerous the meeting in person, you'll never know if some punks are surrounding to that area trying to look for the bitcoin folks that they always thought of having the money and rich.

I don't understand why you treat Bitcoin as non fungible? Bitcoin is a currency, currency is fungible, every satoshi is same, similar to every dollar is same. As long as you didn't interact with the "criminals", you're not supporting them. If you get asked to provide the source, you can just pointed out you're using P2P platform, that's it.

If you afraid you get the money from criminals, probably you need to find out people who had used your dollars.

It is a fact that people will rather go for convenient transactions on centralized exchanges where they'll have to provide KYC, instead of p2p transactions where their privacy is kept from centralized authorities like their governments. So bank restrictions will only make the exchanges services to become more sought after and they'll become richer because they minimize crypto transaction scams, which is on the increase. I personally don't mind doing p2p transactions, but you'll only feel comfortable when it's with a trusted person, it's very risky to do p2p transactions with a person that is not familiar with you, because if you send your Bitcoin, then the person doesn't send fiat into your bank account, there's really no way of tracking the owner of the wallet address.

This post made me reflect back to how we were facing so much challenges within our country even till now it hasn't been resolved, we aren't permitted to buy cryptocurrency with our Debit card from bank hence we all switched to using p2p till date and like seriously that has been the best way to buy bitcoin and not by person to person. This is more risky to say because you won't know what the person may holds for you, instead p2p is more better just trade with a verified users and if you aren't trusting the person you can go bit by bit to executes the total bitcoin you wanna buy provided no cryptocurrency words will be associated while doing your bank transfer to either buyer or sell.

I do have people, family members in the UK and US that are into crypto investment, they have their bank account up and running but they have never get their bank account blocked because they interact with a crypto exchange or crypto in general.

Maybe those who ended in such mess make some mistakes or something? But still I understand what you are trying to say, I will rather rely on P2P platforms too, but it's no more a new thing.

P2P platforms have been around for years now, but it depends on if someone really want to start using them or not, many people still don't have a reason to start using P2P till today, but for those who need it, they will surely find it if they want.

What I want to see happen, is that decentralised exchanges must practice decentralisation and stay on this forever, the SEC are going after Uniswap now, and I am not surprised, because Uniswap used to claim that its decentralised until some time ago where they start operating in a centralized way.

Yes.  And no.

Applying restrictions to Cryptocurrencies is a smart move.  It does two things.  It keeps the sheep under control while the rest of the people who contemplate avoiding the rules will have an instilled fear of avoiding them.

Before, it was easier.  Since there were no regulations, you never had a fear such as the Government finding out about you avoiding them.  Now, things are different.  The people who will continue to avoid the rules will be an amount negligible enough for the Government not to care.  What is important is not losing control over the mass.

Now for your situation, things are simple.  Banks freeze accounts for fiddling with Cryptocurrencies?  Just start moving Cryptocurrency with out the need for Banks, which is how Cryptocurrency was supposed to be used anyway.

But the situation is much more complicated in other cases.  For example.  Cash restrictions are increasing every few years in Europe.  Considering the increased limits on Cash Transactions in the past decade, I can safely assume the limit will be either so low it will become a HUGE burden to pay with Cash, which is pretty much obliging us all to use Card instead, or the limit will simply become inexistent for the same reasons they are now increasing limits.  Fraud, Money Laundering et cetera, which the politicians mostly do, and not the regular citizens like us.

That is where the real struggle begins.  How do you sell your Cryptocurrency earnings while avoiding Banks if Cash Transactions are limited to 1,000 Euros and Banks freeze Cryptocurrency related accounts?  If you have 10,000 Euros in your Bitcoin Wallet and decide to sell it all, do you meet 10 separate people to exchange it all up to the limit?  Do you meet one single guy to silently exchange over the limits?  What do you do?

They are smart by doing this all and they know it slowly becomes a burden and a very uncomfortable fence for all of us, forcing us to both use Banks and to stop using Cryptocurrency altogether.

I do not see many people continuing to risk once more restrictions are applied.  Even meeting a single person face to face to exchange small amounts of Bitcoin is risky enough, and from all people I know, which is a few hundred, I doubt I could find even 10 who would take the risk.

If you live in a country where you can get you bank account frozen or closed because of an association with bitcoin or crypto, then make sure you don't give them a reason to make you bankless. P2P transactions are fine. It's just one person sending to another one for any reason. Come up with a story why you are receiving/sending the money and agree with the other party about what to write as reason for payment.

Even better, try to create or join a network of buyers and sellers in your area who meet face to face. That way you can get the job done immediately.

There is a different problem. We are moving towards a cashless world. Many countries are already cashless and function entirely on debit/credit card payments and mobile payment apps. In 10 or 20 years, it's going to become harder, if not impossible, to get cash without everyone knowing about it.   

I watched a video from Australia yesterday where a woman was complaining that her bank no longer holds any cash at all. It's all digital now. She wanted to withdraw some cash from her account, but was told by the bank clerks that they can't help her. They even suggested that she should transfer her money to a different bank and request cash withdrawals there. She did. Fcuk this world!

Thankfully, banks are very chill in my country (about pretty much everything up to a certain financial threshold), and dealing with cryptos is very common, so such things aren't common in my country. Moreover, people often use platforms where you just make a transaction after placing an order, but don't keep your money on the platform. The platforms are still centralized, but they have a lot of reviews and since you're only risking the money for one transaction, they are convenient.
Trusting individuals is sometimes more difficult than trusting a website that specializes in a certain activity and has a lot of positive reviews, so I'm not sure that it the future.

The problem is not seen now.  It will be more evident in the future.  As Pmalek says, we are moving toward a Cash less society.  This will bring all sorts of problems, including about the usage of Cryptocurrency.  And including the websites you say you are trusting right now, as they will likely not close an eye to smaller Transactions any more.  It happened almost everywhere in the world.  I hope it does not happen to you, but I really doubt it will not.

We had a lot of ATMs which never asked for Know Your Customer.  Good luck finding one now, because it is getting impossible.  We could register onto Centralized Exchanges and deposit, trade and withdraw freely, with no required personal identification.  Now good luck finding a reputable one that will not ask you for an ID.  Because this is getting impossible too.

Cash payment limits are low enough that they become inconvenient and people rather put their money on their Bank account instead so they bypass the limits.  You bypass the limit, but by kneeling to control and Surveillance.

What I see is that barter will be the only solution in such a world.  I give you Bitcoin, you give me bread.  Of course this means more possibilities of getting scammed out and such, but if that is the only remaining alternative what can you do besides risking it or kneeling to the stupid restrictions.

We will see, luckily, P2P cannot be stopped, so we can rest assured ;)

Well P2P transactions are not the future. No matter how we want it to be, but government eventually will put a lot of restrictions on that. Banking institutions are freezing accounts all over the world for P2P transactions as well. However, if there's a licensed exchange in that country, the transactions will be safe. But you won't be able to avoid tax on that.

I believe, P2P transactions are here to stay but we need to be very very careful before we initiate a transaction and need to verify the details of the other party in order to stay safe. A lot of crime proceedings are also mixed in the P2P trading.

You have not given your reasons why you don't like face to face trading of cryptocurrency and from the op explanation and the countries.he mentioned, restricting or freezing Bank accounts that are links to cryptocurrency related transaction. So with that face to face and crypto to crypto transaction will be the best. Then you can also trade with someone account which the op mentioned. And I don't see any dangerous in face to face trading with a friend or someone you know. And you don't have to trade with someone you don't know.

When my country Central Bank, asked all the commerical Banks to freeze any account that was connected to cryptocurrency, people diverted to face to face and well knowing people for trading. And the matter what exchanges are good avenue for trading.

My country is very crypto-friendly, so I have never had a problem with being associated with crypto and I have been using local CEX (sorry, I know it's a very bad practice but I need it) for years without a problem but I have a question about P2P payments. If I exchange crypto via P2P payments frequently, won't I be in trouble if I receive fiat from strange persons? What if any of my internet P2P partners does something illegal? I am personally afraid of that and that's why I hesitate to do P2P trades.
I think that we will have more official and regulated exchanges in the near future and P2P transactions won't be on rise but this might be individual to each country.

This campaign of banks avoiding crypto transactions aren't only in those locations alone, Nigeria has followed the bad wagons and has instructed Banks to closed down any banks associated with crypto transactions. I specifically had some issues with my bank and I was given a form to fill and I saw an option that ask if I do crypto and online gambling. The option specifically stated due to Central Bank new reviews on cracked down cryptk activities, they have the right to close down my accounts and I just select NO because even if I do, they don't expect me to admit.

P2P transactions are actually on the increased but then again to show you that Nigerian government is not playing around with crypto transactions, they have force Binance to take down P2P for Nigerians and NGN other trading pairs. They have also ban Binance from web and other crypto exchanges like Kucoin, crypto dot com, and Coinbase including Blockchain Explorer, the government is sick to be sincere.

With all these campaigns and ban, most crypto traders are now used to sending crypto funds through banks and yet no one will ever know about it because they don't include crypto in the transaction reference, what they do is just to add the sender name and everything is good to go.

Aside the risk with face to face p2p  deals other methods of p2p that could be secured enough is and still remains the best option to stay decentralised and not involved the bank directly, this has been what the situation is here in my region, government ban direct bank transfers for cryptocurrency buying or selling.


But the p2p market becomes the only option that is readily available with some form of privacy,but not on a face to face model.

As users are trading crypto assets worth tens of billions of USD and generating millions of USD in revenue each day for CEXs, traditional banks are not receiving any benefits. I think they cannot be satisfied with that, they want to participate to share this market share rather than destroy the crypto market.

In many countries, when banks do not support crypto-related transactions, the liquidity of the crypto market in that country is seriously reduced, meaning that investors buy and sell crypto under more difficult conditions. This is not good for the development of the market. I believe that traditional banks will soon support crypto-related services to generate revenue in the form of transaction fees or management fees. The same is true for governments: they will manage to collect taxes from crypto instead of trying to destroy crypto.

P2P transaction government cannot monitor it because it is something that deal with the individual and for government to track it and they restrict it I think it will be very difficult for them it is only the backing system I know quite well that government can restrict their transaction through bank transfer which means that it is the bank that will be crediting for any transaction that is being done, in my country there is a restriction of bank transaction that has to do with the cryptocurrency, but in p2p it cannot be restricted from my perspective.

Who is stopping you to use exchanges? Are crypto exchanges like Coinbase or Binance banned in any big western country? I don't think so.
Many people keep talking that Bitcoin/crypto is widely adopted by more banks, companies and individuals and at the same time, people like you claim that banks are blocking accounts, that were involved in crypto trading. Am I missing something? You need a bank account for P2P transactions as well. The only difference is that your bank doesn't know that you are doing fiat-crypto transactions.
Crypto regulations will keep pushing forward and the governments would want to achieve complete control over the crypto industry. Maybe soon we will have to declare our hardware wallets to the tax authorities, but I'm sure that the crypto fanatics will find a way around this.

It doesn't ends there, people can't even tell the difference between centralized and decentralised crypto platforms this days, when a platform overs a P2P service they go ahead and start using the platform, my point is not all peer to peer platform are to be used, what is the use for P2P when they ask you to pass KYC verification?



Privacy isn't even a thing here, if a peer to peer platform can bring convenience to their users without asking for any verification then its all we wanted, banking restrictions won't indeed increase P2P transaction, because too many people are fine with centralized entities even while Bitcoin is a decentralised digital coin.

Many people in crypto space still use and trust centralized exchange today, for their own reasons that I don't get, even after all the hacks and rugpull from different centralized exchanges in the past, why haven't people abandoned centralized exchange? The convienece of using a centralized exchange I guess, and some will say its because centralized exchanges are best for trading and volume wise.

People have their rights to choose and I bet that they will choose to use KYC platforms over decentralised or P2P platforms.

To answer the question in the title; it definitely will.

In the country where I live, the government and banks are all against cryptocurrencies, and even though there are no clear rules about it like being illegal or anything, they don't allow you to make transactions that are associated with cryptocurrencies, and if they find you doing that, your account will be frozen and your funds will be confiscated. They will ask you to provide proof of the payments and they will only accept the proofs if they find them satisfactory, otherwise, they won't unfreeze your account or release your funds.

So, what we do to either buy or sell our cryptocurrencies against the local currency is use P2P platforms where local merchants will send or receive the funds and then you get or release the assets for them. In this way, the transactions being made between us and the merchants are considered normal transactions and aren't marked as transactions being connected with cryptocurrencies.

Platforms such as Binance would even warn you not to mention anything related to cryptocurrencies anywhere when making a transaction to avoid problems when using the P2P platform.

Actually he's right, you can read this https://www.charltonbaker.co.uk/news-blog/banking-and-crypto

It's true even though Bitcoin is legal in Western countries and they recently approve Bitcoin ETFs, but strangely the banks still not want to accept Bitcoin.

Well, that's actually what he looking for. The banks only know other people send him money and have no idea what actually he doing. If the bank officer ask him about the funds, he need to prepare about that and provide the evidences.

You need to remember that I'm in England, and England is a special case. The current world order that evolved from the Knights Templar and the subsequent British Empire, is under threat. The UK is ruled through a different "country", and that is the City of London. This isn't the London controlled by the Mayor of London, but the financial empire known as the square mile. It has a public figurehead who is The Lord Mayor of London. It is estimated that up to 60% of the western world's assets are managed through the "Veil of Tiers" trusts administered by the City of London. This includes the banks, and they feel threatened by crypto that is outside their control. They are also weaponising banking. This evident in the way that they are destroying the dollar, and political punishments such as the de-banking of Nigel Farage and other political figures. The current restrictions are causing crypto exchanges to emigrate from the UK, and thus the government will lose the tax revenue from these businesses. Banks are closing accounts where payment are made to or from crypto exchanges. Tor doesn't help, as the banks will need full details to make the payments. Any attempts to conceal this will probably give rise to a charge of money laundering, and the subsequent confiscation of funds. Whilst I do not agree with much of the current UK government expenditure, I have no desire to attempt to evade the payment of legitimate taxes. However, I do want to keep my current bank accounts and payment services.

If I sell a domain name, then I can accept a peer to peer payment, and push the name via my registrar. I understand that there will be taxes due on the sale, but at no time does the transaction involve any banks if the purchaser already owns Bitcoin. I feel fairly safe when making a cash purchase in a Supermarket cafe. They all have massive numbers of video recording and facial recognition these days, so any attempted robbery would be recorded on video. That raises the question of government access to those video tapes, and that may be something to consider for the future.

Yes, this is something I'm personally predicting big time

People are starting to figure it out. Check out website kycnot.me

Most of crypto is just surveillance like fiat, so they can easily pin your identity to the blockchain & extort you

Problem is - if you coinjoin your BTC, most exchanges/swap sites will now deny your transactions

So you best buy it P2P at the very minimum or just use Monero

however Monero is being shadow-banned all over the place - which tells me they fear it the most. which makes me want to buy & use it more

Currently, my country is slowly adopting the use of crypto transactions, but still, they are using a third party to support the conversation of the crypto coins to fiat coins, but they are now widely accepting the use of crypto even as an act of payment but in limited stores, sooner or later if the government will see the potential on the use of it i guess possible they will adopt but takes a lot of due process with this decentralized feature.

I guess it's the usual reasons. The possibility of getting robbed or receiving fake bank notes fully or partially. You could also be followed home, which would reveal to scammers where you live. Luckily, I have only had positive examples with face-to-face deals, but I have heard horror stories that makes you think how smart it is to meet people you don't know, even in public. All I can say is, don't go unarmed and be willing to strike first if it comes to that.

If those centralised exchanges can also freeze your funds, should you not be equally reluctant to use them to begin with?



If sanity had prevailed, people would have stopped using exchanges when Gox imploded.  The entire concept of recreating custodial banking services in Bitcoin is deeply flawed.  I find it completely insane that so many people readily abandon ownership for convenience.

If you saw someone standing on a street corner saying they'd hold onto your cash for you so you can trade some bits of paper with "IOU" written on them, you'd call the police, right?  Exact same setup on the internet?  Sign up thousands of users.  Go figure.   ::)