Hi guys,
Thanks for coming back to me.
I have even tried to top up Coinbase account but they still blocked me.
It looks like Coinbase in UK has changed. Before I sent money to the account on their name but now I send money to Coinbase under my name so they provide you a sub account (it looks like a SWIFT account)
I think these new measures are because the economy is bad, people lost their jobs and "the street" is incentivized to gamble on the crypto markets to be able to pay rent and bills.
I am not sure if the number of crypto scams have increased probably yes because since a lot of businesses went down you can assume there is more people self-employ themselves as scammers.
In any case in my opinion from Internet-banking point of view the level of "protection" is an overkill but I reckon these security facilities are not immune to scammers who are in direct contact (over the phone) with the victim and instruct them to follow steps.
So in this case it make sense - you can think some elders and/or pretty stupid people would fall for this.
From the bank I know that they treat these transfers as cash transfers so no protection (I don't think this has changed in any way).
Apparently the system is learning how much money usually enters and leaves the account so if there is "an anomaly" then they block it.
I don't know what is the limit that helps to trigger these blocks. Perhaps I should send it in smaller amounts.
A foreign bank account seems like a viable alternative to all the hassle but I would not be surprised that many EU banks are rolling in similar restrictions as we speak.
The problem is they said all high street banks have the same facilities in place (believe me it didn't happened on its own but was rolled out in accord).
If I don't use a high street bank but some small bank if any bigger problem I would have to drive like miles to get to their nearest branch.
One bank didn't want to unlock my account over the phone and asked me to go to their branch and from there they called the fraud line.
In any case it's from 30-1h process even over the phone it's like a proper 30min interview.
Now they block the money leaving the account then they can put some restrictions on how much you can pay in to the account or at some point they block these exchanges from sending money altogether so P2P is going to be the only option.
Is there any ban on place about crypto trading in UK banking system? As far as I know there isn't so its bank making changes in their terms which really depends on their own terms and conditions. But you can bypass this using converting your fiat into BTC or any other crypto using p2p then top up the exchange wallet and consider keeping them as crypto currency itself if you're a long term investor.
There isn't any ban but they make it pretty hard to transact with these entities. They have a list of all of them and you can tell they block it because of crypto not because of some other security concerns.
I would call it a semi-ban in UK.
If I knew the limits I would send below the limit. I reckon if they say "the system is learning" these limits change over time.
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]