Three Triggers that Led us to Leave Banking Behind
Mrugakshee and I didn’t stumble upon the decision to Go Full Crypto overnight. It was a decision that we arrived at over the course of several years. Looking back, there were three key experiences that we had that prompted us to take seriously the notion that we could live with our finances entirely within the world of cryptocurrency. These experiences all had to do with offputting interactions with the traditional baking system.
Of course a prerequisite to going full crypto is that you have the knowledge of how to do so. We wouldn’t be able to go full crypto if we hadn’t been growing our crypto literacy since 2014. Additionally, we might have just brushed off and accepted the experiences as normal unless we were aware that there were much better alternatives for us out there. It was because we were constantly exposed to what is available in the world of cryptocurrency that we were able to make the realization that we no longer needed the traditional banking system to manage our finances. For the first time in history, we could get all the financial services we needed to run a modern household, cheaper, faster, and with less permission than what a banking institution was able to provide us.
Bank Account Rejection
The first experience was an outright rejection to open a bank account for our new company, Atlantic Blockchain Company Inc. It was November 2018, and we had just finished incorporating our business. We knew we needed a bank account, so we went looking for banks that we thought best embodied our values. We naturally gravitated towards our local credit union because we had the perception that they were community oriented and progressive in their approach to banking. Much to our surprise, the credit union outright rejected our request to open a bank account.
We think it was the name of our company, and what we said our company would be doing that ultimately led them to reject us. We told them our company would be consulting and educating individuals, businesses, and organizations on blockchain technology, and cryptocurrency. It was interesting to see that the association between blockchain and cryptocurrency was perceived so negatively by the account manager that we were dealing with.
We suggested to the manager that perhaps a lunch and learn, or knowledge sharing session would be appropriate to make the branch aware of what cryptocurrency is, and how it stands to change the financial services industry. Much to our chagrin, this offer of ours was also rejected. It seemed to us that no matter what we suggested to the branch, we would be faced with a staunch rejection of the business we were in the early stages of starting.
The dominant characteristic of this interaction was fear. The fear of the unknown, as well as the fear of what they thought they knew. Misconceptions about cryptocurrency run rampant largely due to how the media commonly portrays cryptocurrencies. That is, they are often portrayed as a criminal's holy grail for money laundering, or accepting payment for drugs. The global statistics behind how cryptocurrencies are actually used absolutely destroy the narrative that cryptocurrencies are used for these purposes. The damage that false narratives around cryptocurrencies actually bring is real. In our case, we had to go to a banking institution that was not our first choice in order to get our business a bank account. While our own difficulties may seem trivial, the troubles extend beyond simply obtaining a business account. If one’s income relies on cryptocurrency in some way shape or form, it can be questioned, or seen as illegitimate. There may be additional barriers to obtain financing, or banking services that require the applicant to disclose the source(s) of their income.
No Bank Account Required
In order to operate a business in Canada, it is completely necessary to have a functioning bank account. One of the reasons we want to go full crypto, is to demonstrate that personal and business finances can be run without the need of a bank account. We want to show that this is possible for the people in the world that don’t even have the option to go out and get a bank account in the first place. There is really no reason why we need to be reliant on the legacy financial system when a plethora of great new products and services are being built on the best monetary infrastructure the world has ever seen.
Difficulty with Obtaining a Mortgage
Since 2018, we’ve been trying to buy a house. In order to get a house, we needed access to a mortgage. In other words, we needed access to debt. Over the years, we went to see a variety of mortgage brokers to see if they would help us with our unique situation. Getting a mortgage as an entrepreneur is hard enough as it is. Typically, the business needs to be alive for two or more years before a bank will even consider giving you a mortgage. Income and other assets were not even taken into consideration when we’ve applied in the past. This struck me as strange because I started to realize that the mortgage was not just about the money, it was about the type of money. They had sole discretion over what incomes, and assets that would be considered eligible when qualifying us for a mortgage.
In a typical scenario, people are able to use their business, or other assets as collateral for securing debt. When we told them that we have holdings in Bitcoin, and we would like to use that as collateral for their loan, they told us they don’t consider Bitcoin to be eligible collateral. We offered to hold a lunch and learn, and knowledge session for the branch to bring them up to speed on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but were never contacted. Meanwhile, if we took that Bitcoin to a variety of DeFi services or crypto banks like Crypto.com, we could get a loan instantly, with no questions. More than anything, it is the unwillingness to learn and the resistance to change that bothers me the most about the traditional banking system.
Censored Wire Transfers
We were in the process of buying Bitcoin in the middle of 2020 when the third experience took place. We had to wire money from our bank to our cryptocurrency exchange of choice. In order to complete the wire, we needed to actually be physically present in the bank. The transaction started off somewhat normally, we told the teller the amount, and gave them instructions on where to send it. Then the teller asked us a question we weren’t expecting, “What is the purpose of this transfer?”. Although it was a personal question, we knew it was for AML, and security purposes. Privacy issues aside, we decided to answer the question honestly. “We’re transferring it to a cryptocurrency exchange to buy Bitcoin”.
No sooner did the words cryptocurrency and Bitcoin come out of our mouths, did the teller halt our transaction. They proceeded to tell us that they don’t deal with cryptocurrency, and won’t be able to do the wire transfer for us. In effect, this person was telling us that we couldn’t move our money. The reason why this experience hit us as hard as it did, is because it came with the simultaneous realization that we don’t truly own the money we keep in the bank. If we can’t move it where we want, and when we want, then is that truly ownership?
Essentially, the power to tell me what I can and cannot do with my money is financial censorship, and that is a slippery slope. The bank is a private institution that drafts its own rules and policies, just like the social media companies that exercise their power to censor content on their platforms. Those policies are ultimately aligned with the interests and goals of the business. From this perspective, it makes total sense that they wouldn’t want me taking money out of the bank to buy cryptocurrency with. At the point and time when my money becomes cryptocurrency, it’s totally out of the hands of the banking institutions to control.
We’ve always seen censorship as a slippery slope. No matter what is being censored, there is always a “next something” that can be censored. Today it is cryptocurrency, tomorrow it could be products on amazon. Ultimately, when you tell me what I can and cannot use my money for, you’re limiting my financial freedom. In the case of cryptocurrency, we are choosing to store our value in an asset that we believe will liberate us from the perils of inflation and corruption. Then on the other side of the counter, there is someone telling us that we’re not allowed to do this. We kindly left the bank and proceeded to go to another bank where we used the generic explanation of “investments” when asked about the purpose of the wire.
Go Full Crypto Comes to Life
We faced trouble getting an account for our business. When we wanted to work with our personal bank to get a mortgage, we were rejected. Finally, when we wanted to use the bank for simply transferring money, we weren’t allowed to do so. What exactly were we using the bank for? They wouldn’t store our money for us, they wouldn’t loan us money, and they wouldn’t let us transfer what is rightfully ours. All the while, they charge us $5 per month for each of our accounts. It makes absolutely no sense for us to be using a service that we pay for, and getting none of the benefits that the service is supposed to provide.
When we got home that day, we decided that we would opt out of the traditional financial system as soon as it became possible to do so. To our surprise, it was already largely something that could be accomplished. The problem is that you need to know what you are doing. This is one of the reasons why we started Go Full Crypto, so others can benefit from our mistakes. We use a ton of crypto financial services, to accomplish all the things that the traditional financial system was not allowing us to do. Cryptocurrency accounts (simply just “wallets”) are free and open for all. That means there is no possibility of us being rejected for an “account”. We could obtain a crypto loan after providing collateral, all at the click of a button. Lastly, there is no one standing in between us, and who we want to send money to. Just the limitless lines of information that make up the internet of money.