JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citigroup are banning customers from buying bitcoin on their credit cards
JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi are banning bitcoin purchases using their cards. As Bitcoin is a volatile crypto asset, investing in BTC is considered higher risk.
Bank of America started declining transactions with cryptocurrency exchanges on Friday; JPMorgan Chase enacted the ban Saturday.
Inspite of a Crypto reckoning in January (an annual trend), Bitcoin has seen its price surge by more than 700% over the past year. Yet increasing regulations is further setting off a period of crypto volatility with Bitcoin falling below $8,000 for the first time since, wait for it, November. It had previously risen as far as $20,000 in December.
Bitcoin has fallen a full 40% during the last month as what many economics are are calling a bubble spread.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, has been a vocal adversary of the movement calling it a fraud. That JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup are all trying to freeze Bitcoin in its track is not surprising, as there’s been a massive surge of mainstream interest that I call the Crypto Singularity.
In China, mobile payments systems like WeChat and Alipay have basically disrupted credit cards themselves (before they could take off). Blockchain enthusiasts widely believe credit card systems will be disrupted by a decentralized cryptocurrency eventually, and maybe soon.
National bank and centralized financial service providers see the cryptocurrency movement as a threat, and while they recognize the benefits of blockchain in principle, they do not want to lose business to the likes of cryptocurrency exchanges.
In South Korea, a hotspot for Crypto investing, there’s a relatively new ban the use of anonymous bank accounts in cryptocurrency trading as of Jan. 30, 2018. A misleading report earlier last week reported that India had banned Bitcoin outright, causing it to slide. Still, in Japan and South Korea, cryptocurrency investing is some of the strongest in the world.
U.S. banks can recoil, but they aren’t exactly in the vanguard of where Bitcoin and altcoins are truly gaining traction. Inspite of apps such as Coinbase and soon, Robinhood profiting from the movement, forward thinking tech companies like the social chat app Line, is even integration a cryptocurrency exchange feature into its existing services. Even mainstream Facebook has decided to ban Ads related to cryptocurrencies.
At the same time its being reported Mark Zuckerberg sees the light in his own services adopting a cryptocurrency for Facebook. With Kik having done an ICO, and Telegram doing one as well, it’s clear cryptocurrencies will be an integral part in the future of apps.
Meanwhile Tencent’s mini-programs on WeChat, are already disrupting the likes of Apple and Google. The iPhone is ten years old and failing, and the Chinese consumer is taking over the mantle of the next key demographic in the attention economy, later it will be India’s Millennials.
American banks are showing their age, and their concerns with the latest move. WeChat has 768 million users, basically nearly everyone in China with a smartphone. It’s made China go cashless and credit-card less, they are in effect, five to ten years ahead of Western consumers in this respect. In the west payments, credit cards and access to cryptocurrency exchanges remains a confusing mess and primitive user experience for the consumer.