> this sort of thing shouldn’t be possible any more than a bank deciding to take all your money with no recourse. (They can close your account, but they can’t keep your money.)

I once had to help a relative sue a bank who had closed his account after he refused to answer their very intrusive questions (they wanted to know details about distant relatives living in another country). They also refused to return his money (tens of thousands) and refused to explain why. No amount of complaining or escalating made any difference, although we did manage to get a nice recording of an employee saying that he thought the bank was in the wrong.

It took me issuing court proceedings, plus several more months of negotiating with their lawyer, before they finally settled out of court. Even then they tried to not pay the court fee, and they tried to get us to sign an NDA (I refused to budge on both). Altogether, it took 6 months to get the money.

Similar to how people in this thread are talking about mitigating reliance on cloud providers (e.g. with offline backups), I now do not trust any bank. I avoid being in a position where any one bank can ruin my life. That means having multiple accounts and spreading my money around.

Luckily for me I have a legal background so when a corp (big or small) does this sort of thing to me I don't hesitate to sue them. In almost all cases this causes them to "wake up" and start taking your issue seriously, in a way that the front line customer support reps never do. I recommend this to the author of the original post.

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djoldman 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm curious how big the bank was and what country this is in?

It's my understanding that banks really don't want your money once they've closed an account, they want you to take it back.

Bigger banks, at least in the US, usually do this.

	▲	throwawayffffas 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I am guessing it's not that they wanted the money. They thought there was something illegal happening and seized the money. I.e. not for themselves but for whatever law enforcement agency they thought might come looking for it.
	▲	f33d5173 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If they thought you were money laundering, maybe giving it back would be a liability.

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csomar 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I now do not trust any bank.

It baffles me how much this community is opposed to Bitcoin (and fails to delimit it from the rest of the crypto-scams on going) when, for me, it is existential. When you go through 1-2 experiences of bank-freezing and you realize your life is literally at stake here, the abstract debates about energy consumption or speculative bubbles feel like they come from completely misinformed individuals.

It's like watching someone on a rail track arguing not knowing what is about to hit them.

	▲	f33d5173 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Self custody of cryptocurrency, for the vast majority of people, is riskier than putting their money in the bank. Most people lack the technical competence to keep their crypto secure, and the downside of losing access is much more significant. Notice that the stories regarding banks go "I had to sue them to get it back". With cryptocurrency, in the vast majority of cases, it would instead be "the money was gone for good".

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AH4oFVbPT4f8 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Which bank?

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csomar 3 days ago | parent [-]

all banks. Any bank that can indefinitely freeze your money and get away with it will do it. And now that everyone is doing it, the reputation damage is minimized.

	▲	jama211 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		All banks can, but it’s not true to say all banks will. It’s also not reasonable to suggest that some banks aren’t worse than others, so when someone wants to know of a less unsafe bank we should recommend one.
	▲	AH4oFVbPT4f8 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Some banks do things that make you never want to do any business with them. Wells Fargo would open checking/savings/credit card accounts without their customers knowing, then Wells Fargo fired thousands of employees as a result of being caught. I will do everything possible to never to business with them.