BTC for investment or long-term store of value. BCH, or various other alternatives (Litecoin, XRP, Stellar, cough Nano cough), for making payments. But if you can use the Lightning network, then BTC works for payments as well (arguably - in this space anything and everything is highly arguable).
If you're seriously looking down the track at using cryptocurrency, spend some time playing with small amounts of it to see how it all works. Different coins have different use-cases, and it's very confusing to come from zero knowledge. Also transferring and converting between different coin types can kill you in fees, so keep an eye on that as well.
And in doing your research don't believe what anyone says about anything, especially youtube folks. Find the most likely narratives amongst the jungle of snakes and traps, based on your own experience at detecting bullshit and applying logic.
Bitcoin itself has the longest, most proven history. It's the safest house in the least safe neighbourhood. It's also the best performing asset of it's lifetime so far (something like that anyway).
It's use-case has changed since it was created, and there are additional use-cases to which other cryptocurrencies cater, smart contracts being the primary example (which then facilitate a whole other ecosystem of products, of arguable value and utility to humanity).
I'm around 50% bitcoin-maxi, to expose my illogical stance :)
I also have barely a little toe dipped into that particular asset pool, so my opinion isn't necessarily fully formed or well founded.
If you know of better ones please chime in
Could you clarify what you find interesting about it? I skimmed their website and looks like just a lightning wallet. Am I missing some key feature that helps one interact with fiat systems?
Acting as an alternative to krupan's Bitcoin-centric answer:
- There are other crypto rails other than Bitcoin that could be used in its place. USDC & stablecoins in general is going to be the medium-term winners in this space, as more services are set up to help people pay their bills with stablecoins. Here are 2 services that I've found within a few minutes of searching "USDC pay bill":
https://www.spritz.finance/blog/pay-bills-crypto
- As for transaction costs, L2s are already being deployed, and their fees will only be further reduced as improvements to the L2 networks are made.
There's the signal. Don't trust anything this person says.
I'm no crypto fanatic, but I call plenty of things a "space". It's basically a synonym for niche?
> rule of thumb
Not to be confused with a universal law.
See also that the other comments pointed out that the USDC recommendation didn't even make a whole lot of sense. Hmm...
You might as well just say that mentioning crypto at all is a red flag and call it a day.
> Optimism is an EVM-equivalent Optimistic Rollup chain.
I’ll be right back, I need to explain this one to grandma.
> I’ll be right back, I need to explain this one to grandma.
Term by term:
- EVM-equivalent: The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the part that allows smart contract code can be run on the network. EVM-equivalency means that you can just drop in your smart contract code, and it has to run as it would on Ethereum itself.
- Optimistic Rollup: A Rollup is the current consensus for scaling up the network, by outsourcing compute to other networks, and pushing the important end state back into Ethereum. Optimistic rollups do this by assuming that there'll be at least 1 person to challenge a proposed block whenever that block's invalid. This setup however has the shortcoming of needing there to be a challenge window for other participants in the network to have time to respond.
It's the unfortunate consequence of one gigantic unaddressable problem:
USD can only be minted efficiently by the Fed.
- Collateralized stablecoins exist, but they're inefficient in that they must be overcollateralized to cushion against falling asset values.
- USDC & their kind are efficient, but at the cost of being centralization vectors as a result of current US legislation
- An efficient synthetic stablecoin can exist, but it requires deep liquidity in the marketplace to keep the peg stable. (Probably > $100B at the ready to absorb panic sells) Synthetic stocks are the closest analogy available for this, but applied upon a currency. The chicken-and-egg means that bootstrapping something like this is not feasible at small scales: It needs to be big from the get go.
Law: 18 U.S. Code § 1960
Meanwhile I've had the majority of my net worth on Ethereum for over 5 years now and am not really worried about it. And I get user experience that I can never get with bitcoin, like social recovery smart contract wallets.
And taproot is two years old.
Distributed permissionless databases of any sort are a bust and a scam, period. This was tested and found true in the 70s.
If you think about it you are very limited in what you can do. You have an asset that you can self-custody, exchange permissionlessly and without censorship which is good to fight what the original article is about. But you cannot build any financial product on top of it that would have those same properties. Nor be able to scale the transactions per second that the base layer does while keeping those same properties. And I find it very unlikely you can serve the entire world with 7 transactions per second. So yes, there is plenty to innovate on its core function.
Correct, and yet you seem to still miss the point. There are tradeoffs. You can't scale AND maintain those properties. This is why Bitcoin scales with layer 2 solutions like Lightning (and more ideas like Enigma, Ark, Cashu etc.), or things like RGB or Taro for expressiveness. Separation of concerns.
The best attempts to have their cake and eat it too have failed in crypto.
There is very little innovation to be had in the core function of what a blockchain was designed to achieve. There's plenty of innovation ahead of us for the layers that are built on top of it.
zk-proofs allow you to do so. It's seeing very active development, and yes it involves an L2. The issue you seemed to have ignored is that to be able for the L2s to inherit those properties from the L1, the L1 needs to have sufficient expressiveness to be able to build the proof verifiers. I would love to see how anyone builds such a thing on bitcoin.
* Transaction throughput.
* Efficiency - allowing small scale players to participate in verification and block production.
* Inter-chain communication - some networks are explicitly designed as connected swarms of chains (Cosmos and polkadot for example) and some evolving into that direction outside of the protocol level (Ethereum). How do execute transactions that span the networks is an ongoing research topic.
* Privacy - how to execute transactions in private. How to attest that something is true, say that you have a certain credential, without exposing your account information. Blockchain has been why zero knowledge (and now homo-morphic encryption it seems) cryptography are becoming an active field of research.
* Identity, authentication, account recovery. - these tie into cryptography but generally research on applied cryptography with good UX. For example the first time I've seen social-recovery accounts with any amount of usage (now a feature in Apple accounts) was in a blockchain application.
* Monetary research - far from everybody involved in crypto believes that a fixed-supply rare item makes for good money. "Fiat" money is basically a "token" with governance attached to it. This has lead to a wave of experimentation with other forms of tokens - ones that are algorithmically tied to other assets, ones that are backed by an organization, local currencies, etc.
* Organizational research - since smart contracts can effectively be transparent community banks there's has been a plethora of experiments with building organizations that manage their own treasuries. Horizontalism, organizational transparency and cooperation is something that's been at the core of many crypto projects, the idea being that something cannot be both a reliable public good and controlled by a single party. It's not an easy task, but some cool organizations have come out of this. For an example look at pocket: https://messari.io/report/governor-note-proof-of-participati...
Spoiler: Bitcoin wins on all of those. The market cap is better for a reason.
Bitcoin has also done this.
You're referring to the $50m DAO smart contract bug (or "hack") early in 2016, when Ethereum had been running for about a year. The Ethereum blockchain was swiftly rolled back. This was achieved by the majority of Ethereum developers agreeing to create an update to Ethereum software that reversed the hackers transactions specifically, and the great majority of users and miners agreeing to use that updated software. The people behind the DAO were closely connected to the Ethereum developers. Some of them were Ethereum developers. Some of the people who lost money in the DAO were Ethereum developers.
What you're unaware of apparently, is that when Bitcoin had been running for about a year, in 2010, a bug allowed someone to create 184 billion Bitcoins. This effectively made everybody's Bitcoins worthless (or even more worthless!). This event was ALSO swiftly rolled back, just like the Ethereum DAO event, by the same consensus process that I described above.
"Core developers Gavin Andresen and Satoshi Nakamoto were on the case, and the 184 billion BTC transaction was purged from block 74638."
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-history-part-10-the-184-bil...
Since then, there have been various incidents involving Ethereum and Bitcoin and hacks or smart contract bugs that caused losses of millions or billions. But neither currency has ever done a roll back of this nature again.
For instance. A year or so after Ethereum's DAO debacle, there was another similar event, the Parity bug, which accidentally locked $230m in a smart contract, permanently. The people operating Parity were closely connected to the Ethereum developers, some of them were Ethereum developers. But this time, although the victims pleaded for a roll back, it was never seriously considered.
https://news.bitcoin.com/parity-calls-for-ethereum-hard-fork...
Maybe not a rollback, but Ethereum has proven it is malleable time and time again. As one example, compare the issuance of ether to Bitcoin. Eth's issuance is a dog's breakfast, indicative of changing opinions by those who call the shots... just like a central bank.
Bitcoin's issuance? Predictable and steady as a rock for 15 years.
Another example is replacing Proof-of-Work with Proof-of-Stake. A core part of how it works, important for censorship resistance and accessibility, and they removed it for something permissioned that makes censorship far easier.
Bitcoin? Still on PoW and never going to change. If you think it will change, you still don't understand Bitcoin. But never fear, there's already a PoS Bitcoin out there (that no one uses).
I quoted the single issue that I was disputing. I wrote as clearly as possible to only refute one point, about the implication that Bitcoin had never done a roll back.
If you want to talk about all those other things, then make a separate thread or post,. Please don't use my comment as a vehicle for your arguments, because it's confusing and few people will understand what you're talking about.
The ethereum fork was to fix a bug in a smart contract running on top of ethereum. That bug only affected those who were participating in that smart contract (which was code for an investment scheme that a private organization had dreamed up). Lots of ethereum users complained about it.
Can you see the difference?
Yes, I do see some differences. It's true that the situations were not identical.
One important difference is that the amount of money lost in the DAO was MUCH larger than the amount lost by the Bitcoin bug (the Bitcoin bug simply lost the total value of all valid Bitcoins, which I guess was only about $1m at that time in 2010, with few individuals holding substantial amounts).
But there's a VERY important similarity between the two events: They were both existential threats to the respective currency.
That existential threat to Bitcoin was obvious. As you have just said, Bitcoin would have died if they did not quickly invalidate the 'faked' Bitcoins, because the quantity totally dwarfed the true Bitcoin money supply.
The existential threat of the DAO bug to Ethereum was less clear. There was also more time to decide what to do, because the stolen funds had not yet been released from the smart contract, (and I recall the money could be stalled in the contract almost indefinitely by white hat hackers iteratively exploiting the same bug that had created the problem.)
But the consensus at the time was that Ethereum might die if 15% of the entire currency was in a state of limbo, or in the hands of a malicious hacker, compounded by the reputational damage and loss of confidence caused by such a huge disaster that directly impacted thousands of active Ethereum users, not just a few Ethereum developers.
I pointed out that some Ethereum developers lost substantial amounts in the DAO, so I can accept that personal financial loss probably also biased the decisions of some of them to approve a roll back.
But I personally don't believe that personal loss suffered by some Ethereum developers was a very significant factor in the decision to do a roll back of the DAO event. To explain my reasoning: That is why I mentioned the Parity bug.
The Parity bug was an even larger loss in financial terms, but it only affected a very small number of people, who mostly were Ethereum developers. It did not affect the wider community, so it was not seen as an existential threat to Ethereum. So there was no question of a roll back.
Possibly the very acrimonious argument over the DAO fix, which was bad enough to cause a hard fork (creating the ETC currency), was an additional factor discouraging the developers and community from accepting a roll back to fix the Parity bug and later incidents.
The bitcoin fork was to fix a broken promise. The bug meant that Bitcoin didn't work as promised, the code fix and fork fixed that.
One of Ethereum's promises around smart contracts was, "code is law." The fork broke that promise by circumventing the smart contract code.
It is good that they have never done that again, but they have been making other big changes to the original Ethereum code not to fix bugs and broken promises, but to change the way it works. That, to me, is a concern.
Sneaky of you to add "Bitcoin" to that sentence, implying that smart contract bugs on Bitcoin, or Bitcoin hacks have cost people millions or billions. That is completely false, but nice try.
The hacks I was talking about were just all the numerous attacks on exchanges and users that have involved BTC or ETH getting stolen.
It's sort of tedious discussing this kind of thing on HN because there will always be some guy who jumps in and says 'Well, ACTUALLY, what about SBF and FTX!!" even though I'm not talking about that. So, I just wanted to admit there had been many other financial losses, to try to avoid all those clever people replying and telling me about MtGox or Tether or something like that, as if I didn't already know about it. Kind of like that other guy who replied to my comment with something mostly irrelevant that he wanted to spout.
I didn't have time to write that all out in such pedantically specific detail - almost nobody is reading this. So, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that I created. I was not being sneaky. You know: Sometimes, people just don't have time to explain everything in detail.
You seem like someone who is able to see this side of the argument, so thank you again for your comments.
I'm not so sure about understandability at protocol level, I do believe Ethereum to be straightforward but then again I've followed its progress over the years
In this case the disagreement happened because of a backwards incompatible change that was accidentally made to the mining software. Nodes running the old software rejected blocks generated by the new software. The bug was fixed and miners happily stopped using the buggy version of code and the chain fork was resolved, just as designed by the Bitcoin protocol. Nodes that never ran the buggy version didn't have to do a thing.
Like my discussion of the other bitcoin fork, this to me looks like an entirely different category of event than the DAO. Bitcoin fixed a broken promise in both cases. Ethereum broke a promise in the DAO fork.
(Hilariously the first google hit did not work, so I went to the second https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/training/annual... - look who's hosting that)
I use 3 separate banks for this reason. But honestly, the 'reason' for dropping me might be a 3rd party risk assessment that flags something and services all three banks... Or some sort of story or hysteria that could trigger three similar systems.
Using a decent crypto currency with good practice, the biggest threat is me messing something up. And i can put systems in place to minimize this. The only issue is that most things i spend moneys on don't accept crypto and so still need banking services to use crypto. I hope this changes.
Unverifiable, untraceable money arriving into your account does not work well with AML regualations.
Did Chase let you withdraw the outstanding balance in full when they closed your account? The last thing I want is to see my money being trapped in limbo state...
The case one should worry about these banks is this: you deposit a $500K check, or you got a wire for $500K; check was cleared on the sender's side. Now Chase/Big Bank holds your funds, saying that this check is fraudulent, and that bank closes your account after finding you risky (risky because of this $500k and by looking back at your account history). Now $500K is in Chase's hands, your account is closed by Chase, and Chase doesn't want to give $500K, nor does Chase want to return $500K to the original bank/sender. This is where you should file a complaint with CFPB right away. Without CFPB complaints, the fraud department at Chase, its Bank employees just give you run around for months. File CFPB complaint right away, if any bank holds your funds after 10 business days; don't listen to these employees at all.
CFPB can't force banks to reopen your accounts. Just to get your funds, file a complaint with CFPB right away, and don't trust any bank employee on getting your funds.
And of course if it's business transactions, do it with a business account.
What caused the closure? A legitimate transaction that they find suspicious. Conjunction of two issues--not sending the funds back and closing the account without releasing funds to the customer--is real 'thievery' in my opinion. Since big banks are NOT interested in resolving disputes about funds by lying to customers, better file a complaint with CFPB right away with many details and documents.
I suspect the bar would not allow that.
The problem is what you are describing is not exactly legal. You are acting as a money transmitter for your mother; and this might even trigger for you some complex tax obligations.
What you should do is open a Chase bank account for your mother. You already bank with the agency.
Perhaps this article demonstrates that the largest banks are unable to know their customers and truly act on that information. And, perhaps having those banks engage in self-destructive mass cancelations serves regulators' purposes just fine.
Strong controls = more false positives, more account closures, more SAR reports. That's what regulators want, and politicians don't want to rein on these regulators either by amending laws or by reducing "too much discretion" given to regulators. Of course, those affected by debanking (ordinary citizens and small businesses) don't have that kind of lobbying power to bring any such changes.
Big businesses instead can own small banks in fly over states, and run their transactions through those banks. Maybe, it is time to bank with local credit unions, as the latter allow mobile deposits. Once FedNow takes hold across credit unions, better switch to credit unions.
Another lesson: every one should have at least three checking accounts (one or two big banks; one or two credit unions).
imagine if some bank knowingly facilitated money laubdering, and needed to show they gave strong controls. What eould you do?
Thats right, you would close 10k minor accounts of random schmucks for 'suspicious activity', report 'job done' to the regulator, and continue your corrupt practices
And the reason for that is that if anybody knew that somebody was engaged in criminal activity, they wouldn't have their bank account closed, they would be arrested and their finances seized by court order. So the bank account closures only happen to people for whom there is not enough evidence to charge them with a crime. In other words, a ton of innocent people.
Conversely, the bank is not a law enforcement agency and has no real way to distinguish between the kind of criminals who know how not to be obvious and the aforementioned totally innocent people, and if anything the practiced criminals are the ones who know how not to trigger the fraud detection algorithms, unlike the innocent people.
So the criminals don't get caught and the government blames the banks for this, but the banks still don't have any good way to know who the criminals actually are, so all they can ever do is round up random innocent people to put on a show of punishing somebody.
The fraud is that law enforcement should be an obligation of the banking system and that fraud needs to be eliminated.
You won't have to imagine very hard, HSBC was caught laundering money, told they had to strengthen their controls, but ultimately all the Justice Department wanted was a small cut of the action in the form of fines and HSBC has been allowed to continue their corrupt practices even after being caught laundering money again and again (in addition to all kinds of other crimes). It seems like as long as they can pay the fines, banks are basically above the law.
GP says "monitoring transactions should not be sufficient to satisfy KYC" - of course monitoring transactions is required to satisfy AML, flagging any transactions indicates specific knowledge of them being suspicious, and failing to act in any cases where it was warranted will be used as proof of lax controls, with fines starting in the hundreds of millions.
The second time it's flagged for reason X+1, include 10 lines from rank 2 manager.
The moment you start use Zelle heavily, one of those zelle recipients is linked with suspicious activity, that's a problem (btw, Zelle is owned by big banks). Banks find so many things suspicious: many check deposits, many zelle transfers, low balances, many cash/money order deposits, asking for cashier checks, wires(both domestic and foreign), any crypto activity, being a public figure, names similar to those on OFAC list, etc. Basically, they want normal customers (4 pay stubs, paying 10 bills a month) or extremely wealthy clients. Otherwise, you don't fit the average profile, and whatever you do is construed as not being legitimate.
Of course they do. If they didn't have a reason, why would they do it?
I've never used a credit union and have had access to mobile deposits at everything from large multinational banks to small local ones for well over a decade.
Not to defend banks, but you know how many bugs the average large software system has?
This is a big claim. It should have big evidence to back it up.
"19 Republican states accuse JPMorgan of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs" [1][3]. Of course, this site is not favorable to conservatives and their views. Some left activists' accounts are closed as well [2].
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-states-accuse-jpm...
[2] https://nitter.cz/OccupyWallStNYC/status/1674022837084991489
[3] https://www2.cbn.com/news/us/chase-bank-cancels-nonprofits-b...
The same way that Chase closing a restaurant's account is not evidence that Chase is tasting the food in every restaurant and systematically closing accounts for restaurants that cook food that Chase doesn't like.
Based on that standard template, I won't trust big banks, because, hiding behind BSA, banks can use the blanket statement "because of unexpected activity". Now you ask me to trust Banks, because they can't show that evidence to me.
It's about the big claim that Chase monitors the political activity of their customers and systematically closes the accounts of people with opinions Chase doesn't like.
There's precisely zero evidence that they do this.
Even if one blindly accepts your citations from "The 700 Club" and some random post from "Nitter" as authoritative, even they provide zero evidence for that claim.
Big claims require compelling evidence, and you haven't provided any.
You debate like that Chase email explains their reasoning.
The media not reporting it is certainly not evidence, down that path lies true crazy.
This being said this approach is a pretty wild one still, since people NEED banks, and there should be long duration till the expiration (except in cases of fraud, money laundering, ..)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/natwest-meets-quart...
From the Guardian 30 July 2023: <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/30/uk-banks-cl...>:
"Farage used a subject access request to discover that, despite initial denials by NatWest subsidiary Coutts, his political views had played a part in the closure of his account."
No, a subsidiary of NatWest closed Farage's account when he no longer met the investment thresholds for the account he held. The CEO resigned for telling a journalist the above.
That's not the same thing, at all.
I believe the account closure was a business decision, but they definitely had no reason to be public about it. One good thing came out of the debacle, though: it put the spotlight on UK retail banking regulations and how they are allowed to treat customers in the first place.
Financial institutions don't like small-time PEPs. They don't net the banks anywhere near the money dictators and kleptocrats do, but are just as likely to engage in ongoing bribery due to their position in society.
0: Farage had apparently been very vocal about having an account with Coutts, and waving that thing around as a sign of ... something. For the bank, that was negative brand value.
I don't like Farage's opinions, and being a PEP only means "more eyes on you", doesn't mean "kick them out". 1) Now, if Coutts dropped the ball on something, shame on them. A good lawyer can get some good ££££ for damaging the client's business/etc. 2) If Farage didn't mean a minimum-net-worth.. that's another story.
If farage had met the requirements, none of this would have happened.
Not according to follow-up reports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38159768
> We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts' decision on Mr Farage's account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage
That does not say that he did meet the net worth requirements. See [0], and read the article. No outlet has retracted the claim that he didn't meet the wealth requirements which is why his account was flagged for review.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/21/bbc-amends-sto...
I'm a immediate relative of a PEP. And banks treat those just like they treat PEPs.
I've banked in 4 different countries with about 10 banks total, disclosed to them the fact that I'm a PEP or an immediate relative of one, and it has never, ever caused any issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_exposed_person
> In financial regulation, a politically exposed person (PEP) is one who has been entrusted with a prominent public function. A PEP generally presents a higher risk for potential involvement in bribery and corruption by virtue of their position and the influence they may hold. The terms "politically exposed person" and senior foreign political figure are often used interchangeably, particularly in international forums.
Best I could find.
The BBC had previously reported Farage falling below the financial threshold required to be a customer at Coutts - whose website advises its clients should be able to borrow or invest at least 1 million pounds ($1.28 million) with the bank or hold 3 million pounds in savings - was the reason for the closure.But an internal review of the bank account obtained by Farage showed the private bank's wealth reputational risk committee had said his values did not align with the bank's own.
"We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts' decision on Mr Farage's account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage," the BBC said in the corrections and clarifications section of its website.
No outlets have retracted the claim that he didn't meet the wealth criteria, and nobody has claimed that Coutts lied about him meeting the threshold. In fact, every outlet that I checked today stil claims he didn't meet the wealth criteria, and that the CEO resigned because she discussed details of a client's account with a journalist, e.g. [0]
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/26/business/alison-rose-natw...
Chase is will known for this in many political circles
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How many of the people waving Taliban flags or HAMAS flags in Britain have been debanked in the past month?
Palestinian aid groups do indeed seem to be getting debanked in the UK from time to time: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/jan/03/accounts.israe...
Actions that have been widely celebrate by the political segment of the population that often aligns with the gun control movement.
Actions that could have been curbed if the people that were attacked where allowed to defend themselves in stead of reliance on state protection that never came, and Israel is now rolling back many of their gun control provisions rightly so...
>>I think scrutiny on groups which are (a) armed and (b) make political statements is probably justified.
I think scrutiny on groups which are armed and make clear threats of violence are justified. "political" statements is a bridge to far from me, that applies to all religions.
If you are in the US, express the desire to violently "decolonize" the US or chant "from the river to the sea" then maybe you should be investigated. If you are in the US and express the desire lynch a racial group then maybe you should be investigated.
The problem here is in the US today only one of those groups is actually being investigate. The other are free the vandalize monuments, and storm the capital with out punishment of any type where by if the other group even happens to stroll near a government building they put in prison for years.
How about some equality under the law for a change? People claim they want that but in reality they dont
The original founding document of Netanyahu’s Likud party:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...
“between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty”
When the terrorist organizations chant "From the river to the sea" they are clearly calling for the forced removal (at best) of all Jews from the land.
A political party that calls for "Israeli sovereignty between the Sea and the Jordan" it is clearly a rejection of the "2 state solution" but that is not a call for the removal of an ethnic population from the region. One critical difference here is you can disagree with that political party, vote them out of that government even, and express full support for a 2 state solution with out being raped, or killed. Somehow I doubt Hamas would allow that.
Israeli a western democracy has an actual framework of secular law and a history of respecting the rights of people including Arabs, Gays, Women ect
Hamas is a terrorist organization that has a history of authoritarian control, rape, murder, and no framework for respecting any individual rights at all, you bow to the most draconian interpretation of Islamic law or you die.
People generally don't even understand what the term "free Palestine" means, even without the "From the river to the sea" part. It's not a call for an independent Palestinian state. It's a call for a Palestinian state where Israel stands.
And we all know how that would end for just about all non-Arab Israelis.
Hamas members chanting "from the river to the sea" most certainly have genocidal intent, yes. Saying "from the river to the sea" alone - as the Likud document pretty clearly shows - doesn't make you a Hamas member nor a terrorist. There are a lot of attempts to conflate "Palestinian === Hamas", but that's sleight of hand.
I'm all for wiping out Hamas. I'm quite dubious about the possibility of doing so via armed conflict.
> A political party that calls for "Israeli sovereignty between the Sea and the Jordan" it is clearly a rejection of the "2 state solution" but that is not a call for the removal of an ethnic population from the region.
Maybe, but it's certainly a call for an un-free Palestine.
(Palestinians are rightly a bit leery of removal here; recent events have seen proposals to relocate them to the Sinai (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-30/ty-article/.p... / https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/world/middleeast/israel-e...) and a government minister suggesting nuking Gaza (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-discipli...).)
"Free Palestine",as with other short slogans (see: BLM, Defund), encompasses a range of opinions. Both genocide and the two-state solution fall squarely within it.
if they did not want to be conflated than perhaps they should have accepted one of the 5 2 state solutions proposed by mutiple parties over the decades.
Contrary to your claims I do not believe Palestinian's desire a 2 state solution in any form, instead they rejected every attempt by the UN, Britain, even the Saudi's then elected Hamas to be their official government when Israel pulled out of Gaza and allowed them to self govern...
Sorry if I press F for Doubt that they want a peaceful co-existence with Israel
It is also telling that no other Muslim nation will accept Palestinian refugees, Not Jordan, not Egypt, not even Iran...
>>Maybe, but it's certainly a call for an un-free Palestine.
Correct, it is signalling that after decades of attempted compromise that maybe a 2 state solution is not really possible. This is setting aside the fact that in reality there was already a 2 state solution where by British Mandate "Palestine" was split in 2, Jordan and Israel. However in the old adage of given in inch take a mile more was demanded...
All offers for peace have been rejected by Palestine not Israel..
Even right now, a cease fire can be easily achieved if Hamas Surrenders Unconditionally, and Free's all hostages... Hell I bet a 2 state solution would even be on the table even after all of that
I bet it would Palestine not Israel that would reject said 2 state solution.
Why lie like this? The Saudi proposal you mention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative) was accepted by Arafat, largely opposed by Hamas (surprise!), but rejected by Ariel Sharon.
"The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat immediately embraced the initiative. His successor Mahmoud Abbas also supported the plan and officially asked U.S. President Barack Obama to adopt it as part of his Middle East policy. Islamist political party Hamas, the elected government of the Gaza Strip, was deeply divided, with most factions rejecting the plan. The Israeli government under Ariel Sharon rejected the initiative as a "non-starter" because it required Israel to withdraw to pre-June 1967 borders. In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed tentative support for the Initiative, but in 2018, he rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians."
> if they did not want to be conflated than perhaps they should have accepted one of the 5 2 state solutions proposed by mutiple parties over the decades.
2002 above was the last concrete proposal. Half of Gaza is under 18; they've never even had the opportunity to do so.
2008 actually, when Palestinians were even offered East Jerusalem. I seriously doubt that they'll see such an offer ever again.
Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Only if you think the ends justify the means.
At least, that is the charitable interpretation.
Oh lord, this just asks for gamification.
If there's a multi-million dollar customer and a five thousand dollar customer, who do you reckon they'd rather lose in order to reach their quotas?
"Banks are under tremendous pressure by regulators to file a certain amount of SARS (as a ratio of overall transaction activity, which is determined by the regulator - regulators have a secret bogey for each bank). A shortfall from the number expected by the regulators for a bank will result in the bank being penalized by the regulator as having an inadequate BSA program (even if the bank compliance staff reviewed the activity and didn’t find anything worth SAR reporting on). If the bank fights this censure for not filing enough SARs the arbiter of justice is the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) department of the FDIC or OCC. They rule in favor of the regulators over 99% of the time.) For example California Pacific Bank- a tiny bank serving the Chinese trading community with 200 customers and 500 accounts - was persecuted for more than 5 years for not filing enough SARs, it’s hearing with the ALJ is on YouTube. Even though racist anti Chinese comments by the regulators were unearthed in depositions, the ALJ ruling still went against the bank. Furthermore, banks are required to review ongoing activity of SAR’d customers and file follow up SARs if the “typology” of suspicious activity continues. Bank BSA policies have the requirement that repeat SAR subjects will need to have their accounts closed. Most banks therefore just file SARS on anything that matches a typology and close accounts- that’s just how the BSA regulatory system works.” [1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/your-money/bank-account-s...
No wonder shit doesn't work the way it should. Reporting on numbers and percentages rather than actual incidences with audit trails leading to shell companies and tax havens and opaque offshore ownership structures.
Because that takes time and effort that meaningless "numbers and percentages" don't require whatsoever.
Automation scaling is the jackboot stamping on the human face.
I didn't experience that when I was on board of directors.
In my personal affairs I had a checking account force closed because of their auditors - not the regulators. Rumors and myths about enforcement have internal people and contractor (compliance software) going too far. No recourse individually on this behavior.
(Interac is the Canadian debit card system, owned by a network of banks, which has also branched out into person-to-person money transfers between bank accounts because we don't have Venmo/Zelle/etc here).
In the UK the first three cases in a year are free, but from the fourth onward the bank has to pay £750 [1]. It doesn't matter the outcome is - the customer could be totally innocent or the next Bernie Madoff - the bank has to pay. A customer saying "I will get the Ombudsman involved" is heard by the bank as "if we don't make this go away right now, we will get charged £750 (plus any compensation the Ombudsman may award)". It does tend to make them sit up and take notice, I hear, presumably because banks get a lot of complaints and so a large bill.
[1]: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/resolving-...
Since when is this grounds for closing an account?
Many phone systems have a thinly veiled threat about zero tolerance policies, to treat staff with respect, and in the case of certain government agencies here in the UK, that they will refer cases to the police. The same is repeated on written posters in eg doctors and dentist offices
Just a coincidence I’m sure but I find employees (especially on the phone) even more condescending and unhelpful these days
What's really behind the decision is simply risk avoidance. It's like "firing" bad customers. The banks consider it prudent business to kick anyone who might be a problem out the door. Avoiding one criminal causing issues is worth kicking out 20 ordinary honest customers.
Banks do what the government tells them to do.
They are more than happy to launder drug money, they don't care. You think they close the account of some random person who made too many cash deposits to protect themselves from the customer?
No, they protect themselves from the government who will hit them with massive fines when they "fund terrorism".
You're lying.
I didn't dispute any transactions, nor did I deposit any fraudulent checks, no check bounces, no overdrafts, no cash deposits, no wires, not an instance of disrespecting any Chase employee either on phone or in person. Yes, I used Zelle often, I deposited checks often. When people complain about debanking, many folks defend these banks, saying that there are good reasons for these banks to close (some transaction, etc).
Banks are heavily regulated, I understand. Regulators want to see a certain number of SAR and CTR filings based on the size of bank. If a bank has 1M accounts, regulators want to see a certain number of SAR/CTR filings, a certain number of account closures; regulators go hard on financial institutions, if the latter don't follow the industry average (#SARs, #CTRs, #closures). This has created a vicious loop: banks use machine-learning/AI to flag accounts; then, back office employees 95% of the time just close these accounts.
Welcome to the new debanking world. Chase and many others also monitor your political activity, social media, protests, etc. If they don't like you, they can close your account by simply stating that "we have an obligation to know our customers; after careful consideration, we decided to close your account". When banks decide to close your checking accounts, beware that they also close your credit cards (esp Chase is notorious for this).