First UK Bank Bans Businesses Accepting Bitcoin

[Fortify]

Came across this potentially damaging development for Bitcoin today:

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?

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[jackg]

Maybe they bought some coinbase stock (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.

[stompix]

Who wrote that article on capital.com?

NatWest will no longer serve business clients who wish to pay using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and NEO.

vs Guardian

NatWest will refuse to serve business customers who accept payment in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin

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  ?

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

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.

[Mauser]

Came across this potentially damaging development for Bitcoin today:

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?

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.

[slapper]

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

[BIT-BENDER]

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.

[adzino]

Came across this potentially damaging development for Bitcoin today:

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?

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.

[nightxglow]

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.

[wheelz1200]

Came across this potentially damaging development for Bitcoin today:

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?

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.

[pixie85]

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.

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.

[hulla]

First, Natwest don't say anything about this situation on their announcement page  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.

[famososMuertos]

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.

[Johnyz]

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.

[Swordsoffreedom]

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!

[kawetsriyanto]

Do you think other banks will follow suit?

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.

If they do, will we see the Bitcoin price sink in future?

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.

[zanezane]

Maybe they bought some coinbase stock (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.

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.

[mindrust]

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.

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.

[ilovealtcoins]

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.

[ivankoh]

Came across this potentially damaging development for Bitcoin today:

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?

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!