I needed to open a new business account, but information about crypto friendliness of banks was scattered everywhere. Thus, Moon Banking.
Moon Banking lets you rank banks on crypto-friendliness, as well as share your stories about banks.
https://moonbanking.com -- Feedback appreciated.
This is a great idea to help people and businesses find banking services that won't get closed down as soon as they start doing too many crypto/fiat conversions. It's one of the most important considerations for anyone, especially businesses, in this field. For my organization, I opened multiple accounts with banks after having a full discussion of cryptocurrency because we cannot afford to be without banking services for any length of time.
From my conversations with bankers, the biggest issue doesn't seem to be that they are taking a hostile attitude because they see crypto as a threat (though I'm sure there's some of that). For most, it seems to be that the crypto/fiat transactions are often tagged as suspicious and therefore they have to go through their anti-money laundering process repeatedly. For small banks, this is often a manual process because the volume of their SAR (suspicious activity report) transactions is low. And for larger banks, it's a very small amount of their business, so it's easier for them to "just say no".
One of the projects I'm working on is one that will lead to (provided the required survey of the potential membership field [crypto industry] supports it) the chartering of "Cryptocurrency Federal Credit Union", which will be a FCU that specializes in personal and business banking for those that deal extensively in crypto. The great thing about credit unions is that they are member-owned, which I believe is a better model for the cryptocurrency ecosystem and more reflective of the "be your own bank", decentralized view that many of us believe in. Incidentally, the bankers I spoke with about this project thought it was a great idea, even though they didn't know much about crypto.
Until we do our day to day purchases in Bitcoin or with other crypto assets, reliable fiat/crypto conversion is needed, which is what this enable. Once it is operating, it will also make it easier for new/existing crypto businesses because we FCUs can partner in certain ways with those businesses to greatly reduce their regulatory burden re: money services business registration in the many states it is now required in.
Best of luck with your project and I will contribute information I have on financial institutions as I come across them.
Best regards,
Ben
Thanks, Ben! The credit union idea sounds interesting. I would be interested to hear more about that if you end up moving forward.