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In the traditional financial landscape, Bank of America, one of the most important American banking institutions, finds itself in the spotlight following allegations of closing customer accounts related to cryptocurrency transactions.
It all started when Muneeb Ali, co-creator of Bitcoin’s Layer 2 platform Stacks, claimed that BoA had closed his personal account without giving a reason. Ali believes this shutdown stems from his Coinbase transactions related to buying and selling Bitcoin:
SO @Bank of America I just closed my personal bank account which I have been using for 15 years. No reason given.
Real reason? I do Coinbase transactions through this account for bitcoin.
It’s a war against bitcoin and crypto. Please RT to warn others. We will not remain silent.
— muneeb.btc (@muneeb) July 12, 2023
The controversy was heightened by Brian Armstrong, the CEO of leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
Armstrong, who has more than 1.2 million Twitter followers, conducted a survey to find out if Coinbase customers, who also do business with BoA, had their accounts terminated due to interactions with its exchange. This poll followed a series of rumors on Twitter about abrupt account closures at BoA, with speculation pointing to a possible correlation to cryptocurrency transactions.
AT @Bank of America closed your account due to transactions with @coinbase? Curious if that’s the problem.
— Brian Armstrong 🛡️ (@brian_armstrong) July 13, 2023
Out of 13,746 respondents at the time of writing, around 1,200 (about 9%) confirmed that their accounts had been closed. Meanwhile, 19.3% of participants refuted such an event. The other respondents abstained from voting, preferring to monitor the results instead.
Ali called he “Operation Choke Point 2.0”, indicating that legal action could take place in the near future.
Operation Chokepoint is from the Nic Carter podcast What Bitcoin has done. Carter declared“Certain Biden administration officials who work with specific regulators, particularly banking regulators to marginalize the Bitcoin and crypto industry in the United States in reaction to FTX (…) Their preferred way of doing this, c is a high leverage tactic, is to delegate banks to do their dirty work for them, saying “don’t deal with crypto companies, don’t cash them”:”
“They think: Crypto is out of control, and we need to do something about it.”
Bank of America has yet to comment on these allegations or the growing unrest among its customers who use crypto.
