Australian Banks Freeze Customer Accounts Linked to Crypto Activity
In some short of shocking news coming from the Australian Island, four Australian banks have allegedly froze accounts of few of its customers sighting their involvement in crypto activities. A few customers have complained that the banks have prohibited them from transferring their funds to the exchange.
Crypto trader Alex Saunders mentioned the name of the four banks in a tweet saying that National Australia Bank, ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Westpac Banking Corporation are blocking clients accounts and fund transfers to crypto exchanges like Coinbase, CoinJar, BTC Markets and CoinSpot.
A lot of crypto enthusiasts in Australia have expressed their anger calling these move by banks as completely “appalling” and “disgusting”. Some users also said that they would prefer to switch over to other banks. Mick Sullivan replied to Alex’s tweet saying “Great way to lose customers guys... Banks should be focusing on how they can invest in crypto rather than blocking customers from spending their own hard earned.”
In response to the friction with the banks, popular local cryptocurrency exchange Coinspot announced a momentary hold on crypto deposits. The exchange alerted its customers by saying “We assure you we are just as unhappy with the situation as you, but unfortunately Australian banks have been so far unwilling to work with the digital currency industry which leads to frequent account closures and strict limits on accounts whilst they remain operational, in effect debanking our industry.”
While commenting on the sudden action taken by the exchange, Australian John Rudge said “I can’t believe what you did to your customers with your $AUD deposit ‘debacle’. We don’t live in Zimbabwe or China, surely you saw this banking ‘crisis’ approaching.”
In his rage he further stated “At the very least you could have given us a month’s notice so we could stockpile reserves for ourselves. I can see you didn’t want to lose customers to other services so better just keep mum about it and we’ll sell them a bullshit story about being bullied by the banks!”
A representative of the Commonwealth bank has stated that the bank is quite open to the progress in digital currency technology. He further added that “we do not currently use or recommend any existing virtual currencies as we do not believe they have yet met a minimum standard of regulation, reliability, and reputation compared to other currencies that we offer to our customers.”
Government of Australia updated an AML/CFT bill back in mid-October which aimed at getting Bitcoin exchanges under the current legislation.
The latest event has certainly left most of the crypto enthusiast and bank customer unhappy about their decision.