Three Triggers that Led us to Leave Banking Behind

One Year of Going Full Crypto

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 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 off-putting 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 and financial 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, it was cheaper, faster, and requiring less permission than with a banking institution, that we could get all the financial services we needed to run a modern household.

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 far 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. This questioning can manifest as reluctance to grant financial services in general, resulting in the deprivation of financial services.

This is a slippery slope, as the banking institution has full discretion on what sources of income they will consider to be legitimate. It may be cryptocurrency today, but can very well be something else tomorrow.

More than anything about this experience, it is the unwillingness to learn and the resistance to change that bothers me the most about the traditional banking system.

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 wanted to go full crypto, was to demonstrate that personal and business finances can be run without the need of a bank account.

We wanted 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’d 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 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 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 about our holdings in Bitcoin, and that we’d like to use that as collateral for their loan, they told us they don’t consider Bitcoin to be eligible collateral. In order to obtain a mortgage with the bank, we would have to liquidate our Bitcoin, and keep cash in our account for 90 days.

We decided to take to the internet to explore alternative options for securing enough debt to purchase a house. We discovered that if we took our Bitcoin to a variety of DeFi services or crypto banks like Crypto.com, we could use Bitcoin as collateral to get a loan instantly, with no further questions.

Using these services come with their own risks and responsibilities for maintaining the debt. But we are responsible for the actions we take with our money, and are fully prepared to suffer the consequences of the agreements that we voluntarily enter into, should the circumstances change against our favour.

What may ultimately be the downfall of the banks, is their resistance to change. It could be the case that they are under the impression that Bitcoin will not last, and this is all just a fad. However, their underestimation of Bitcoin may eventually be their undoing.

There may come a time when it becomes necessary to adopt Bitcoin, and at such time, the price of adoption could be far more expensive that it is now.

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 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 assumed it was for AML or 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 our money where we want, and when we want, then is that true 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, whilst being censored and restricted to use 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 was that there was a lack of information on how to do so. This is one of the reasons why we started Go Full Crypto, so others can benefit from our journey of opting out.

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, with cryptocurrency, we can move money when we want, to where we want, from wherever we may be in the world. This is what the monetary revolution looks like.

Welcome to the internet of money.

Regards,

Keegan