A judge in Israel has ruled that Union bank, the sixth largest in Israel, that closed the bank account of a crypto mining company was unreasonable.“I believe that the sweeping policy, which does not distinguish between different types of activity, scope of activity and different types of customers — in the field of digital currencies — is unreasonable.” – Judge Bibi said.
This highlights the challenge for business that are involved with Cryptocurrencies obtaining a bank account, yet governments, including Israel’s, are talking and in some cases actually offering Digital Currencies, so will using these state-backed Digital currencies also trigger banks to close customers’ accounts?
There is still a perception that while dealing in Cryptos is not illegal as it is largely unregulated it attracts the criminal fraternity. However, is there a deeper reason for this reluctance to be involved with Cryptos in that Banks are genuinely worried about the potential threat posed by Cryptos. Does this explain why Bitpay which processed over $3Billion of transactions in 2018, and Kraken, one of the largest exchanges in the world, both had their bank accounts closed last year?
It is not all gloom and doom Signature Bank in the U.S., Bank Frick in Europe and Clearbank in the UK all offer Crypto banking facilities. There are also FCA regulated companies in the UK, like Baanx and Global Block who will accept Crypto exchange them into Fiat and then transfer the Fiat proceeds to firms.
