Don’t think this has been discussed about before, so thought that I should bring it up. Once you receive your banking license, will you be fine with people using your platform for any sort of Bitcoin trading? I’m hoping that unlike other banks, you’ll allow this to take place and not close accounts as long as the trades are legal. Can anyone clarify?
Anyone have any idea?
It’s a interesting one this.
To me it would be yes as you complete a bank transfer, so to Mondo it’s just viewed as you sending/receiving money.
I’ve brought and sold bitcoins and I use pingit, mainly due to how quick and ease it is.
Bitcoins you will always have its risks when it comes to buying, but to a bank a bank transfer is a bank transfer, what ever you may be buying!
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Can you clarify what do you mean by " I’m hoping that unlike other banks, you’ll allow this to take place and not close accounts as long as the trades are legal."? Other banks? Illegal?
I believe what is being referenced here is all the cases of UK (and other) banks closing any accounts that have any connection to Bitcoin, seemingly out of fear and/or incompetence. See the link in the post above yours for just one case of this.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s legal or not at many banks, they just want nothing to do with it and eject any customers who use any kind of Bitcoin/BTC wording in payments or pay/get paid by Bitcoin exchanges. Barclays especially used to be very hot on closing the accounts of my friends who legally traded BTC without any explanation or recourse.
I’m not the biggest fan of Bitcoin but it seemed a bit wrong that these banks were throwing out customers for as little as a single payment to/from an exchange, no matter what it was for.
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Thanks, you’ve correctly pointed out what I was trying to get across. I think that it is unfair on businesses that get their bank accounts shut down for trading bitcoins, I’m just trying to understand whether Mondo will be following suit.
I use bitcoin quite a bit (Ive actually got a bitcoin debit card, a bit like a bitcoin version of Mondo from Xapo) and my bank hasn’t complained. Ive never bought any large purchases with it though. Think last time I used it was to buy milk…
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Can I ask why you chose Xapo? It seems expensive to me, especially the 3% load for other currencies - one of the features of bitcoin is that it should be very cheap to convert into any currency, certainly no more expensive than converting into your native currency.
And a PIN change fee? Really?
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The main reason was that it didn’t require you to “top up” the card. The funds just come straight out your bitcoin balance. All the other ones I looked at required you to transfer the bitcoin to the card first.
I load it up from my bitcoin miner so I don’t use there “buy bitcoin” service.
Don’t use it much but its nice to have the option when I need it.
To be a fully intergrated bank one that finally accepts and intergrates cryptocurrencies would be a huge step forward.
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this would be awesome. I’m thinking something similar to what the Coinbase app does currently?
Big up the Bitcoin crew!
Even when trades are legal some banks still close personal accounts when it becomes apparent that account holders are not just making an occassional small buy or sell but actively trading on a regular basis or large values or their bitcoin transactions take up the majority of activity on their account. They tend to regard this behaviour as business-like in nature and claim that contrary to the purpose of a personal account. Even some newer entrants or challenger banks like Fidor regularly close personal account due to the levels of bitcoin activity. It would be good if the Treasury and Bank of England could encourage banks to take a more positive approach to cryptocurrency but at the moment that does not look likely. Instead of BoE adopting XBT for example they have even discussed creating their own cryptocurrency. The reason is the banks want to retain control of the money market and the state wishes all income to be taxed appropriately. With XBT pretty much anonymous and untraceable it does cry out to be used by those who wish to avade or avoid tax or launder money. As long as that image hangs over it those responsible for legal or regulatory compliance in a bank will tend to err on the overcautious approach to XBT dealing by customers.
Bitcoin is not really untraceable, every transaction is on the blockchain and there are many groups doing amazing amounts of blockchain analysis - they can track bitcoin from account to account and this is why coinbase etc know to close accounts of people sending bitcoin to dark markets.
If you want truly anonymous and untraceable, then monero is the one to look at.
what do you suggest between monero and bread (ios)
bread is an excellent wallet for bitcoin
monero is a different coin which is based on ring signatures for privacy - it is relatively immature compared to bitcoin and the wallet technology is not as developed as that available for bitcoin.
There is a mobile wallet being introduced - I haven’t kept track of it though.
Would be great if we can topup card with bitcoin or ether. Ideally the conversation to fiat will be on purchase transaction.
So bitcoin / ether will be held in there own wallets on the card, as the price of crypto can fluctuate compared to fiat, only converted to fiat at point of purchased transaction.
I have got a prepaid Monzo debit card. Can it be used to buy bitcoins? I can buy bitcoins if 3D security is supported. So, do you support 3D security?
Monzo don’t at the moment. They will when the current accounts launch -
but since some banks block Coinbase, even if they do support 3DS, I’ve moved your post to a topic that’s dedicated to cryptocurrencies…