Quote from: toddbethell on December 08, 2011, 09:40:32 PM

Bitcoin related chase accounts closing?

My Name is Todd Bethell aka Bitcoin ATM.

3 Nov. 2011 a letter was generated by Chase stating that the business account of Fast Bitcoins will be closed.

See the letter: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B0tOdBpZt1ifMzRhMTMzZmItYWNlYS00YmUyLThjNWYtMDg0MGFlNjE0YTlj

This DBA and account were opened in April 2011 for the sole purpose of bitcoin purchases with MtGox. There was no explanation and no other notification, no phone calls, email notifications or messages in on-line banking. A bitcoin friendly branch manager made some phone calls for me and couldn't tell me much except that the department involved is internal to 'Chase Operating Loss Prevention' and looks to him like it was flagged for money laundering, international sanctions and such. My funds were not frozen though and I was even given to the end of the year to tidy things up. So it seems they were not given a 'hard stop' order from outside the bank.

Also:
Oct 16th 2011, ExchB closed with a less than satisfying explanation and now quite suspicious.
https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/
6 Dec. 2011, MtGox announced the suspension of chase transfers without explanation.
https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1949/why-so-many-bitcoin-exchanges-have-their-bank-accounts-closed-and-have-problems

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48663.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50275.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4984.msg597803#msg597803

There seems to be a systemic issue here.

Respectfully,

Todd D Bethell, CFM, MBA
1-949-394-5932
Skype: toddbethell
toddbethell@FASTscaning.com, @bitcoinfever.com, @bitcoinATM.com

Hi Todd, it's been a while. Glad to see you're still going strong.

Banks and Bitcoin don't get along for a few reasons. We can go with the paranoid conspiracy theory (not saying it's wrong) or we can go with the simple answer that when money comes in from a bunch of accounts (worse if anonymously) and then goes out to a bunch of accounts and the banks have no idea what happened in the middle it sets off all kinds of flags. It really looks like money laundering and even if we run millions through these accounts it's not worth it for them to keep them open.

You're going to probably see a lot of accounts open up and then run small volume for them before they're closed down. Establishing a relationship with the bank to where they understand and support what is going on is more difficult but will become more common place over the following years.

Jered