My bank forbids transacting with steem and other crypto
I just got phone feedback from the bank regarding my request to transact fiat to crypto and trade on Poloniex. They told me that those actions are illegal by their policies. It is Sparkasse bank, but next week I will go to other banks in my city to see if there is any bank that actually understands crypto. I find this difficult for me because I don't want to end up in jail for doing those things, there's nothing bad in trade.
I live in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in small country like this, crypto is still big news. However, the bank which I use is German bank so maybe their laws are forcing them to implement a policy like this.
What do you think about this and what are your experiences?
I would like to know more about this, to avoid bad moves and be prepared for what is waiting for me in crypto world. I am evangelising crypto and blockchain big time in here and a lot of people is coming into community heavily.
Back in the days when exchanges were not yet able to receive SEPA transfers I used services like payza or okpay. Wire transfers were too slow and too expensive. Although that might have changed. Recently I got a mail from okpay, that they do not support btc-e anymore. A while ago I had no problems with SEPA transfairs to exchanges with a German bank. It must be a thing in your country.
Just look at different exchanges and check what kind of funding option they offer and see which one could work for you and then take the one with the lowest fees in the process.
Limits are problem, I had experiences with several people who want to buy in bigger sum of money and for that purpose I went there and researched. No matter how I turn things around with online services ... I still need to transact here in Bosnia.
Well, when you want to transfer more than 10,000 € then you have challenges everywhere. Can you split the transactions and send them a few days apart? Or through several services? Or... you find something like localbitcoins, where you find someone in BiH who wants to sell BTC and you meet in person and you make the transaction on the spot. When it is bigger sums make sure to really meet in person and do the transactions together ; )
Try UniCredit, I heared they plan to join ripple-s network, meaning they must be pro crypto. source?
That's a good idea, thanks
Sounds like it's time for you to go bank shopping ;)
Yeah, definitely. However, unfortunately it seems like I don't have many choices. I will research into all of them next week and write detailed results on my blog here. If nothing works, I will try to push community to solve this problem together.
Cool. I have no idea what your local regulations will allow. Don't forget to check into online accounts like Xapo and maybe Bluebird by AMEX. Good luck!
Thanks for suggestions :)
I am at 'Fidor Bank'. This is a german online bank. They are very cryptofriendly. Therefor they have a partnership with bitcoin.de and, if i am not mistaken Coinbase.
Is it possible for a foreign citizens to have account in there?
That I don't know. Might be they have a international approach as they are an online bank.
It's non of their damn business what you do with your money.
Why do you have to talk to them about that at all? Just send money via sepa...
I'm with DKB (also a german bank) and had no issues at all - although I used coinbase for fiat<->crypto and then moved it from there to polo...
Well, imagine there was a shop that is selling illegal drugs only. Would it be ok for your bank to transfer money there? Nope, they cannot, illegal activity is obvious. In this case I don't think it would be forbidden to buy crypto. It's just that the bank is fearful as the regulation is not in place yet and they hate risks. Especially when it comes to higher amounts of money there is always the questions of avoiding tax or money laundry and that is definitely not allowed. So the bank simply does not want to be affiliated with that. It's their right to do so. One does not need to like that, but I would understand it. And that is why you have to find another way to send money to other places first and then from there you send it to exchanges.
I am ok with full disclosure of my activities related to trading, I just want to find legal way to do it.
Moving to polo is easy part .... Moving back is hard. Also Bosnia is not in SEPA unfortunately.
Crypto currencies are not illegal in Germany. Of course, you would have to make sure to pay taxes if you earn crypto-money as a business, and that is a very complicated territory since the whole concept is new to authorities.
It seems that some banks just try very hard to keep people from using crypto currencies as it challenges the fiat business model.
However, I made some very good experiences with a German bank called Fidor Bank. They even partnered up with bitcoin.de to allow express trading. I don't know if you have to be a German resident to get an account, but perhaps you'll just give it a try.