Andreas Antonopoulos: why banks call Bitcoiners

Video with the speech of Andreas Antonopoulos under the name "Money as a System of Control", undoubtedly, should be watched by every follower of bitcoin. In it, Antonopoulos explains how money is used to control their senders and recipients, as well as tracking financial transactions around the world. In addition, he tells how false the banking system really is. Banks can not only freeze or confiscate money without our consent, in fact, they are the owners of our finances, we are simply granted access to them - and this, to put it mildly, is a dishonest deal. As explained by Antonopoulos, we do not have money in the bank, we have only an account that gives us access to the money that we placed in the bank, believing fake security guarantees. This situation is demonstrated by a brilliant example of the debt crisis in Greece - the entire population of the country kept savings in banks and they were insured, but one day the promise was violated and money was rendered inaccessible.

The video also explains “the call.” The call is the pushy phone call in which banks, acting as if they were jealous lovers, ask bitcoiners about specific bitcoin-related transactions. These calls have been occurring for years, and while some are solved once bitcoiners justify where they got the money from, or what they was doing with their bitcoins, others are merely a manager’s quest for knowledge.

As one bitcoiner who got the call puts it on Reddit, usually big banks give people problems with bitcoin, while local banks are much happier with their customers and provide a better service to bitcoiners.

According to the redditor, here’s how the conversation went:

“For what purpose are you buying Bitcoin” (he saw Coinbase and Xapo transactions). I told him I wouldn’t answer, he then asked “What are you going to do with the Bitcoin”, I again told him I wouldn’t answer. He then informed me that his security team told him they would “exit the relationship with me” if they didn’t get satisfactory answers. I relented and told him “for investment purposes” hoping to avoid needing to switch banks.”

The redditor’s answer could satisfy the bank, but the caller informed him that PNC Bank wants “nothing to do with bitcoin.” One would first think that the bank wants nothing to do with bitcoin because of its largely unregulated market, and as another redditor puts it, the bank does have to ask about certain amounts of money, as its required by law.

However, the banker made it clear at the end that PNC Bank wants “nothing to do with bitcoin” and, as such, clarified that it wasn’t about the transaction or its volume, but about it being related to bitcoin.

Your writer here also called his bank to know how it would react to bitcoin-related transactions. The employee that picked up the phone was defensive, but made it clear that it would block such transactions, and could even cancel my account.

“The Call” Shows Banks Are Losing Control

As Andreas Antonopoulos put it, banks are now losing control over the system they created. People no longer believe in the fictional security banks provide, or that they actually own their money once they open an account.

An entire generation of people are now exiting the financial system and turning to cryptocurrencies, a much better system that regulators can’t get to. They can try to control it, by forcing exchanges to do what they want to, and by trying to keep people away from cryptocurrencies, but they can’t control cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

Here’s Andreas Antonopoulos on “the call”: