Topic: U.S. bank closing all of my deposit accounts because of bitcoins (Read 20566 times)

What's been assumed is that either (1) DPR gave authorities access to those bitcoins, or (2) he failed to properly secure them by either not encrypting the private keys at all or by using weak passwords.

Yep.

All you need to spend the money in any wallet is the private key.  You can create one insecurely, such as by using a bad "brain wallet" (some would say any brain wallet), or you can trust a web wallet to keep your key online.  Or you can get hacked.  Or you can voluntarily give it up to the authorities, such as if they're waterboarding you, or offering you a deal where you get to leave prison before you're 80.

hello all
I dont understand all technical details but how it is possible that FBI bureau has located and seized a collection of 144,000 bitcoins???

I thought that BTC cannot be seized or taken away by officials or police. especially when someone encrypt the wallet.
How they could eaily seized firstly btc of users of silkroad and now at second also seized ulbrichts money??

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-says-its-seized-20-million-in-bitcoins-from-ross-ulbricht-alleged-owner-of-silk-road/

and at second - I would say that news like this should sent price of bitcoin down, especially when we know "that from the 1,814,400 BTC awarded, 1,148,800 BTC has never been spent (63%).   As of October 2012.
we suppose (but have not checked it yet) that these are exactly the segments that belong to the mystery entity," https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

The Verge reported earlier this year that Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin network’s mysterious founder, has an address with over one million bitcoins.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/6/4295028/report-satoshi-nakamoto

I thought that people would be scared of all that bad news and bitcoin price would fall down (so that I could afford to buy some  

The same thing just happened to me today.  They didn't send me a letter, but when they called me and asked me about the number of out-of-state deposits in my account, they told me they have a policy against bitcoin and closed my accounts.

As much as I hate banks, I've had good experiences dealing with Wells Fargo doing BTC related transactions. Zero issues after 2+ years of transactions.

Did they at least let you withdrawal? If not your wasting time..

While you're doing the right thing not openly endorsing "tax evasion" (illegal) - I prefer not to peeve off violent entities like governments and police myself - it should be noted that tax avoidance, which is to say doing everything legally practicable to minimise tax liabilities, is to be strongly recommended. Let's take capital gains tax for the sake of argument: you are a resident of the UK that imposes a hefty capital-gain tax above GBP 10.400 annual gains. Illegal tax evasion would be to try to make those gains (relevant to this community, exchanging bitcoin for fiat after a strong exchange rate rise) "invisible", e.g. by trading under the table into cash or PMs and telling the government nothing about it. Perfectly peaceable and moral, but illegal. Legal tax avoidance might be to relocate to the Isle of Man or Germany, which have less unfavourable laws regarding capital-gain taxes.

Be careful, and comply with the laws in your country.
Do not try to evade tax.

I would not recommend Chyprus though

Cyprus? Iceland?

Bank where the rich people bank.

Sorry, I'm not rich so I can't recommend any. Belize? Switzerland?

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2011/11/14/7-ways-credit-unions-are-better-than-banks

or I can speak from my perspective. I've been with the same credit union since I was 8, I think. Never any fees to have accounts there, unless I were to unnecessarily upgrade. First 10 years, <1% APY savings account only. Then when I turned 18, I was able to get free eChecking (they sent 2 complimentary checkbooks when I signed up, and I still haven't used up #1) and a credit line. My CU credit line is now over $12k with less than 10% interest. My Chase Amazon Visa card, just under $3k, IDK about interest because I'm liquid enough to pay 100% every month and I barely spend anything to begin with. Apparently it's 14-22%.

Then when I got into Bitcoin, I got fucked by going FRB Reg D overlimit, never even realizing it existed before then. I closed my savings account and now can do unlimited numbers of transactions on my credit card & checking account.

Credit unions tend to join co-op networks where you can use their ATMs fee-free, mine is in the same network with a CU that has cash-taking ATMs, so I can deposit and get credited immediately whenever the ATM works (I have to say it had a broken sign on it the last time I went there).

So really, the only reason to use a bank is to roll the dice on being able to have an account people can deposit to across multi-state distances (no CU other than Internet Archive's covers more than one metro area, AFAIK). You pay way more fees, then they may close your account and say "lol bitcoin". My CU hasn't questioned my bitcoin activity at all, and the only fee I paid was for the Reg D overlimit. Also, there was no requirement for me to pay to be a member, or have some cause for being a member. I just became one, and so did the rest of my family.

hmmm. are you saying that credit unions are preferable to banks? how so?  

I quit using banks 30 years ago. The nearest office of my credit union is now a four hour drive away but I use ATMs and a local credit union that's on the credit union network when an ATM won't do the job.

WOW, i had no idea this was happening to people. i have never involved my bank account with a bitcoin transaction, but i now i know the risks.... 

Pretty much every business, other than an essential utility, can decide that they no longer wish to do business with you. It can definitely be extremely inconvenient.

Wow, I hope this doesn't happen to me. I have used coinbase a few times. 

woo..how can they do this..

That's incredible.  This has been a bad year for exchanges.  Now a bad one for user accounts. 

This is not so surprising. The less you can involve your bank with bitcoins, the better, as a general rule....