Justin Sun and Paypal’s Roelof Botha Have Their Accounts Closed by Bank Of America

Roelof Botha, Former executive of PayPal, suffered an unexpected notification that the Bank of America has officially fired Botha as a customer. It was made clear that Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, received the same notification as well.

https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1196277766410256384

Both parties shared this information via twitter. Of course, BOA declined to give a proper explanation about the matter. Botha has served as a customer for BOA for an even 20 years, with Justin Sun being its customer for eight.

The Great “Sin” of Bitcoin

Without any solid explanation as to why Bank of America had barred Botha from business, speculation has been rampant of what he had done to facilitate it. It wasn’t long before people suspected one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capitalists of performing the “unfathomable” act to buy bitcoin.

It’s a growing trend among banks that they start summarily banning customers from buying any form of cryptocurrency as an attempt to curb the rising technology’s growth. The Reserve Bank of India is an excellent example of this growing trend. India’s major bank served out a “crypto ban” against all businesses that dealt with any cryptocurrency and forbade banks from providing services to these various companies. It’s gotten to a point where there are laws drafted in India where people get sentenced for ten years should they have anything to do with crypto.

Most large banking firms across Europe and the US follow this same philosophy, taking rather extreme measures to try and control something they really can’t.

A New Trend

Mark Jeffrey, co-founder of Guardian Circle, made a rather astute observation about the matter when the CEO of CivicKey, Vinny Lingham, asked Botha if he bought any Bitcoin.

That was my first thought as well — but while I've heard of banks unbanking companies for crypto, I've not heard of them unbanking *individuals* — much less someone as high profile as @roelofbotha. This is new.

— Mark Jeffrey (@markjeffrey) November 18, 2019

Within the tweet, Jeffrey pointed out that a bank removing the accounts of business is common, but they never really unbank individuals for purchasing crypto. He stated that this event was a new one not associated with any trend. What that means is anyone’s guess and the fact that both he and Justin Sun were banned together doesn’t really bode well for either of them.

Cyclists and Exchanges

In related events regarding banks in the UK, Scott Snaith had his personal and business accounts frozen after doing a peer-to-peer transaction on a cryptocurrency exchange. The cycling merchant was left with no money to pay his employees because of it.

Barclays, the British banking giant, quite suddenly cut its ties with one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, Coinbase, in August this year. This was after almost a year of the crypto exchange being under the banking firm’s wings.

The world is fighting hard against the rising trend of crypto, but its inherent qualities and desirability will inevitably result in the acceptance of the currency. It’s much like how intellectuals of history were deemed as madmen by the ruling elite due to fear of disrupting the status quo.