Is Your Money Safe at the Bank?

idealsceneprod (47)in #money • 7 years ago

Today I watched a video by @themoneygps about a glitch with Bank of America. I know people who have accounts there (I used to, before I moved over to a credit union) and I remembered there was a glitch with Chase earlier this year as well.

So, I thought I'd research how many glitches there had been this year alone (2017), and below's a long list of articles spanning the globe.

Is your money safe? When's the next "glitch" going to hit? Is it going to affect you?

It is for this, and many other reasons (such as fraud, government bailouts, etc.) that I believe people are flocking to crypto-currencies (fear and greed move the Stock Market, and the cryptos market is no different).

And it is for these reasons that I keep very little money at the bank (that and the fact I'm still paying off credit cards and loans) and am investing in crypto-currencies. I even started mining XMR (Monero) using my spare machines. It's not a lot, to be honest (about 2 cents of XMR per week or about 60 cents USD) so I may soon discontinue it. But, then again, if Monero rises up a lot lilke Zcash or Cloak or Dash, those 2 cents would be worth a lot more. It all depends on how much you're paying for your electrical bill. But I digress.

Look at the list below. Is your bank on there? Were you affected this time? What about next time?

There's an article about a woman who was charged $710 billion, twice. Just a regular person. A glitch changed the bank's ledger and they have to fix it. On the blockchain, it would have been dropped as an invalid transaction. A hacker (and I'm not claiming it was a hack that caused this poor woman's problem) would have to take over 50% of the people running full bitcoin nodes, including mining pools, in order to cheat the system.

So, I ask you again. Is your money safe at the bank? If you look online you'll see article after article of how bank had their investment advisers recommend not the best choice for the customer in front of them, but the choice that would get the bank, and employee, the greatest commission. Pressure selling. Even cold calling their customers just to meet their quotas and keep their jobs at the bank.

My wife and I were hit with the California housing bubble, and when we tried to do a deed-in-lieu (essentially return the house to the bank) they wouldn't take it because there was a tax lien on it. A tax lien caused by the same bank which was supposed to pay those taxes with our monthly mortgage payment (impounded taxes) .

How many more stories will we need to hear before we say enough is enough. How many more bailouts or bailins? How many more actions for which any of us would end up in jail, and the bankers... get a slap on the wrist and a bailout from us?

What can we do? Encourage your merchants to embrace the crypto-currency revolution. It's Pandora's box. Just like cell phones and the Internet, it simply won't go away, no matter how much bankers cry to politicians and they try to pass stupid laws to save us from "terrorism".

There are plenty of cryptos designed with privacy in mind - and just as cash is hard to trace, and criminals use it, so can cryptos provide you with anonimity. The banks and the government won't know how much cryptos you have, unless you're keeping them at an exchange. They'd have to trace the transactions from the Exchange to your Key, and then trace any transactions outgoing from there and try to figure out which might be your other addresses. But even in those cases, with privacy cryptos like Monero, Cloak and Dash (even FantomCoin) which make it impossible to discern who's who, and who's Key is getting what.

How will they tax you then? Only when you enter their FIAT currency (i.e. backed by nothing). "Fiat" is a Latin word meaning "Let it be.'

Below this final rant, is the list of articles I found. Is your bank on there? What about in prior years? What about in the future?

The alternative requires a lot more personal responsibility and care - as with all things in life involving progress and growth -- but it also offers you security and protection from Fractional Reserve Banking. If you don't have it, you can't lend it. You can't make money on cryptos you don't have, which will protect us from all these crazy bubbles (hyper-inflated assets).

Sure, there will be a lot of ups and downs in the cryptos, and Central Banks and Big Money firms will start buying (some have already) and then dumping, in the hopes of not only making profit, but also discouraging people from adopting cryptos.

But slowly, the world is waking up to the possibilities. New job positions are being created from people in this industry. Programmers, smart contract developers, etc. You can't stop it. This is the beginning of a beautiful technology, and the sooner you embrace it, the sooner you'll reap the rewards. Be cautious, of course. Keep your private keys to yourself, and don't keep your cryptos on an exchange. Keep them locally on your computer, or a hardware wallet like a Trezor, or something. Keep a paper copy of your keys somewhere safe.

Bank glitches in 2017:

Bank of America
http://inteldinarchronicles.blogspot.com/2017/07/bank-of-america-glitch-creates-havoc.html

Chase Bank (JP Morgan)
http://kstp.com/technology/tech-bytes-chase-bank-online-glitch-samsung-new-flip-phone-apple-watch-fitbit-tracks-heart-conditions/4481229/

HSBC (US, but it is a Chinese Bank)
https://www.ft.com/content/6f9aa128-b3a0-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51

Frost Bank (US)
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2017/03/16/frost-bank-credit-card-debit-card-tech-glitch-atm.html

Barclay's Bank (UK)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/barclays-customers-left-without-cash-6704557

Lloyd's Bank (UK)
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/3870725/lloyds-bank-suffers-online-banking-glitch-leaving-customers-locked-out-of-accounts/

Nationwide and NatWest (UK)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/building-societies/9430072/Millions-hit-by-new-banking-glitch.html

Royal Bank of Scottland
https://www.ft.com/content/58231ce0-2be1-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c

Bank of the Philipines
http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/06/08/1707871/bank-glitch-causes-chaos

Citizen's Bank (US)
https://consumerist.com/2017/03/17/citizens-bank-glitch-makes-direct-deposits-disappear-leaves-bills-unpaid/

Florida Blue (US)
http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2017-05-01/florida-blue-glitch-leads-overdrawn-bank-accounts-some-thousands-dollars