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!
For now, the difficulty I am having is converting fiat to crypto twice a month. As for crypto to fiat, it doesn't bother me now for my focus is crypto accumulation. Perhaps after 3 to 5 years, that's the time I will test converting crypto to fiat and I hope that by that time, policies will be more crypto-friendly.
That's rough that you're having difficulty! Not good news!
Still not familiar with the tech side. I worried last night. I thought I lost it again. It already happened to me twice, sending it to the wrong address and forgetting the key. It's good that they are just small, 35 $HIVE and $17 worth of $HIVE.
things are looking a little hairy out there, might be time to bail and move to South America
Where FIAT is mostly fucked?!?
I set up Monzo a few years ago cuz I don't live there but I'm a citizen, but other banks refuse to allow me to open a bank because my feet don't happen to be ono British soil...??
Monzo didn't seem to mind, now I'm getting 4.6% APR on my savings in their bank in a pot that has no commitment, can take out instantly. I mean, that's a pretty sweet deal! It's no 20% HBD, but still.
So yeah, this is another reason for me to be a bit of a fanboy about Monzo (even though it does have its issues - no credit cards kinda sucks... is it even a real bank technically?)
I know a few people who use monzo, that's a good interest rate for just a regular account!
Interesting read! Never thought about getting money out, but it seems to be a real pain. Will just continue to grow my hive account / power and will see what the future brings.
Great write-up!
#freecompliments
It's certainly less of a headache if you just keep the funny money where it is!
True, although in the end I would like to be able to withdraw. But won't be for the coming years. So we'll see then as the space evolves rather fast..
We must be patient as this should all change by June next year with MiCA enforcing banks play ball. I do believe this space will open up, but expect it to get worse before then.
MiCA is a mixed blessing for sure; UX is going to be awful with all the whitelisting of addresses... I think it's actually coming in 2025.
MiCA was passed in July this year and they have 12 months to implement this and goes live in 2024 June/July. The EU has no choice due to them using blockchains for the controlling of carbon emissions which is live in January 2025. hey have set deadlines that need to go live and need to give the companies the chance to get sorted before that date and why MiCA has to be up and running at least 6 months before.
okay thanks for the heads up
9 months is not too long to wait!
No it is around the corner as we are literally 3 months from Christmas.
UK was supposed to be crypto friendly... I guess Sunak thought CBDCs are crypto and that's why he tried to make the people believe the UK will become a crypto hub. As the use cases for stablecoins will widen the need for getting from fiat to crypto and back will become weaker.
I don't think the UK is too bad, it's just some of the larger banks doing the FUD!
it won't matter when fiat is crypto
Yes I think I was thinking somewhere along those lines!
I've been using Nexo as my intermediary and it still works fairly well (currently) from a UK perspective. I havent put any fiat in there for ages, but last time it was no problem. You can also hold USD, GBP and EUR amounts in Nexo, and I'm wondering if that might make it easier to put fiat in as you'd be buying native currency as opposed to crypto, and then you can convert to crypto.
I also recently did a test to make sure I could withdraw from crypto into fiat within the last 4 weeks via Nexo (the first time I've ever tried it), just to make sure I could actually do it. It was no problem, and even with a small amount. Basically, I converted what I wanted to withdraw into LTC, sent that to Nexo, in Nexo I changed that to GBP, and then withdrew that amount of GBP - and was actually surprised at how low the fees were throughout (minor percentages lost in the exchange fees, and a very small LTC network transfer charge), with the final GBP withdrawal from Nexo being free - which considering the withdrawal amount was only £3.54 - I was quite surprised at. I seem to remember you get a free withdrawal once per month or something - but havent checked that, so dont take that as confirmed.
The other reason I like Nexo is that they pay nice interest on held amount of quite a lot of cryptos, and also USD, EUR and GBP.
I hope that helps - I'm happy to provide a referral link if needed.
I'm aware of Nexo but never used it, I've no need of it right now, but I'll keep it in mind if I do, cheers! Kraken works for me, Bittrex also!
Buying is easy, selling not so. I haven't sold any for around 7-8 months now and it was Binance before the crackdown. Is Kraken still usable?
Well it was but I've just had to contact support about a missing LTC tx so maybe it's all fucked!
Same here in Europe. Binance now have no fiat on ramp for EUR at all..
2 P2P options I am testing are:
https://bisq.network/
and
https://hodlhodl.com/
wow that's crazy!
and thanks for the P2P sites
yeah, paid $30 to onramp today with Swissborg. looks like The Kraken is the best on ramp right now only.
damn i just realized it :o
yeah, we still have CDC and i have found Swissborg ok.
Hi, I would like all banks to accept crypto, nice post.👍👍👍
Certainly a two way relationship would be best!