I was chatting with a friend of mine in the co-working space yesterday about the increasing difficulty of being able to withdraw crypto to UK bank accounts.
It got me to wondering what the current restrictions are, and they've defo got a lot worse in the last three years...
- Nationwide doesn't allow any customers to buy crypto with credit OR debit cards, and there's a £5K daily limit straight from yer bank account.
- HSBC doesn't allow purchase of crypto with credit cards.
- Barclays doesn't allow purchase of crypto through its online accounts, and has blocked any transactions with Binance.
- Santander imposes a £1K daily and £3K rolling 30 day limit on crypto purchases.
- WISE doesn't deal in crypto at all!
The two most crypto friendly accounts with much fewer restrictions are....
- Revolute and
- Monzo.
Yes, the two newer banks.
I guess the old school are just running scared!
But does it matter...?
Well it all depends on a lot of variables...
If yer not into crypto and want to stack it certainly makes life a lot more difficult to go from FIAT to crypto.
If you've already got crypto and hope to use it someday to buy doughnuts, I guess this only matters if doughnut stores don't accept crypto payments at some point in the future.
Right now if you want to buy doughnuts with yer crypto you've got a lot more choice of doughnut stores if you can covert yer crypto to FIAT, and right now it's easy enough to get your crypto out if you're prepared to do KYC, especially with the newer banks.
But of course if the UK or other countries tighten the regulatory net on crypto to the extent of banning it effectively even those newer banks are going to have to cut on and off ramps.
For now the big boys are just gambling on the FUD game, but if we have relatively light touch regulation going forwards I think a lot of the newer banks are going to maintain easy access, and other crypto payment mechanisms could become available.
There's also the crypto.com type route of course!
NB my mate also mentioned a bunch of UK guys who had set up a crypto friendly bank in a tax haven, with a promise not share details with the UK government, shady yes, but useful for crypto whales, for sure.
I just can't remember the name of it, I'm not a whale anyway and it costs $600 to set up an account!