My bank, a very popular and mainstream commercial bank discontinued our relationship with no explanation after a Coinbase purchase

EDUCATIONAL

I came home today to find certified mail from my bank letting me know that they were terminating our relationship. I will skip the boring details but essentially there is an agreement with the bank when opening an account that states:

The bank reserves the rights to terminate the account without cause if the bank decides they would like to do so without providing reason to the consumer.

I'm a responsible banker, a responsible and (more important in this event) a fiscally responsible citizen. I've never caused the slightest bit of grief for the bank and I've been with them for a long time.

According to the paper they sent me, they had decided to terminate my account 1 day after the first time I used that account to purchase Ethereum with it. Coincidence? Probably not.

Anyways, switching banks is a massive pain in the ass, especially when you've been with them for as long as I have and you have everything automated.

I just want this to be a lesson to anyone who trusts the large commercial banks, plan that something like this may happen to you. I was caught with my pants down so to speak because I didn't have a backup bank that I liked and I hadn't planned for this contingency.

If I could go back in time a week, I'd use a different bank account which would be dedicated for crypto purchases and sales, maybe a credit union. I'm just furious right now and I wanted to spread the word. It doesn't matter if you're a law-abiding taxpayer and a good citizen, your bank that you've been with for years and have a mortgage with may drop you because they see 'Coinbase' on your statement.

If there's some other reason that this happened to me, I can't begin to fathom what that is and I've thought long and hard about it. This is why crypto appeals to me, the banks are unfair to say the very least.

Edit: Thanks for the support. I'm going to be moving to a bank that's in the EEA. Apparently the bank I used isn't as popular as I thought it was outside of the Northeast US.

Posted Jul 21, 2017, 10:16 PM UTC · edited

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