• Banks are gatekeeping customers from buying bitcoin.
• Jamie Dimon’s comments sparked a policy that prevents Chase customers from buying Bitcoin on Cash App.
• It is time to take proactive steps towards permissionless, non-KYC Bitcoining.
Banks Are Gatekeeping Money
Just in case we needed a reminder, banks are showing us that they can and will gatekeep their customers’ money to prevent them from engaging with bitcoin. This should be a call to action for Bitcoiners or anyone else who wants to maintain control over their finances to move toward more proactive use of permissionless bitcoin tools and practices.
Jamie Dimon’s Comments
Ever since Jamie Dimon decried Bitcoin as a “hyped-up fraud” and “a pet rock,” on CNBC in late January 2023, I have found myself unable to purchase bitcoin using my Chase debit card on Cash App. And I’m not the only one — if you’ve been following Bitcoin Twitter recently, you may have seen Alana Joy tweet about her experience with the same. In both of our cases, it is the bank preventing bitcoin purchases and blocking inbound fiat transfers to Cash App for customers that it has associated with Bitcoin, all under the guise of “fraud protection,” of course.
Murky Policies
No one seems to know exactly when this became Chase’s policy. The fraud representative I spoke with wasn’t sure and couldn’t point to any documentation, but reasoned that the rule has been in place since early last year. Yet murkier still, loose chatter can be found on Reddit about this issue going back to at least April 2021. However, given that I and so many others were definitely buying bitcoin via Chase debit throughout 2021 and 2022, I’d wager that this policy, up to now, has only been exercised haphazardly, selectively