On Thursday (May 2; 15:55 PDT), David Schwartz, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Californian FinTech firm Ripple, said some time ago his primary bank, MUFG Union Bank (“Union Bank”) had closed all of his accounts without any notice.

The Ripple CTO’s comments about what had happened to him came after Ran Neuner (“@cryptomanran” on Twitter), the host of CNBC Africa’s “Crypto Trader” show, as well as Co-Founder and CEO of Onchain  Capital, said earlier in the day that his bank had contacted him because they were concerned about his crypto-related deposts and withdrawals:

Schwartz replied to Neuner to explain to him that things could be worse—Neuner’s bank could have closed the accounts without any notice—and took this opportunity to remind people that this is why they should never do any crypto-related transactions through their primary bank:

Note that, according to a separate clarifying tweet (sent out roughly 50 minutes after the original version of this article was published) by Schwartz, what happened to him at Union Bank occurred “a couple of years ago,” and the word “just” refers to him “getting no warning or opportunity to explain, not it being recent.”

Schwartz went on to give more details on how Union Bank had behaved:

Neuner and Schwartz are not the only prominent members of the crypto community who have experienced difficulties with their banks due to crypto-related transactions.

In fact, just one day earlier, Peter McCormack, the host and producer of the “What Bitcoin Did” podcast, said that when he was trying to open a bank account in the UK for his podcast business, he had been “rejected by 6 retail banks”:

Of course, the reason that some banks are being ultra strict with their customers when it comes to crypto is concern over compliance with anti money laundering (AML) regulations.

Upon hearing about Neuner’s banking woes, Justin Sun, the Founder and CEO of TRON Foundation, suggested that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) should be extended such that it includes the right to buy crypto:

 

Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pexels.com