Banks Have Received Over $332B in Penalties Since 2000 – Bitcoin Is a Necessity for the People
The opacity of the banking system is dramatic for the people.
Written by Sylvain Saurel - In Bitcoin We Trust
Opponents of Bitcoin constantly convey to the general public the idea that Bitcoin is an environmental disaster with no value. The general public ends up believing what politicians, bankers, and economists have been hammering home for over a decade.
These powerful people of the current monetary and financial system are helped by the media who love to make headlines with unfounded attacks against Bitcoin.
One recurring attack on Bitcoin is that the opacity of its system facilitates money laundering. Criminals are said to love Bitcoin. They would even use it more than the US dollar for their illegal actions if you listen to what the politicians keep saying.
In reality, this is again a totally false cliché.
Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin to provide an alternative to the flawed banking system
Bitcoin is an open and transparent system. Everyone can see what is going on in the Bitcoin network at all times. In fact, criminals have little interest in using the Bitcoin network for their activities. Of course, some do, but they are in the minority.
Criminals largely prefer to use the US dollar and the current banking system to launder money. The numbers don't lie on this. The US dollar is used far more than Bitcoin for illegal activities.
The opacity of the current banking system allows and even facilitates this. The natural human penchant for corruption then does the rest. This is a long-standing problem that prompted Satoshi Nakamoto to create Bitcoin:
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.”
Satoshi Nakamoto is not talking about the corruption of the current banking system per se, but he is highlighting the problem of trust that we can no longer have in private banks and central banks.
Banks have been fined more than $332 billion since 2000 for violating the rules
The current system requires that we can have blind trust in these institutions, but history has shown us that they never cease to violate this trust.
Since 2000, banks around the world have had to pay more than $332 billion in penalties for violations of rules in the financial services world. The reasons for these violations are varied:
Mortgage abuses.
Fraud.
Toxic securities abuses.
Investor protection violation.
Economic sanction violation.
Consumer protection violation
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Anti-money-laundering deficiencies.
Banking violation.
False Claims Act and related.
Foreign exchange market manipulation.
Price-fixing or anti-competitive practices.
Interest rate benchmark manipulation.
Tax violations.
I'll stop here, but I assure you that the list is long. To get a better idea, I invite you to discover for yourself the Violation Tracker maintained by the Good Jobs First website.
The opacity of the banking system facilitates the human penchant for corruption
As you can see, bankers do not hesitate to act illegally in many areas: corruption, money laundering, abuse of home loans, fraud, and so on!
In the top 10 of banks most sanctioned for these practices against the interests of their clients, we find Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup:
Bank of America has been fined more than $82 billion in just 20 years. The bank has also received the largest fine over this period, amounting to 16.6 billion dollars, for mortgage abuses.
Bitcoin is a necessity for a better future
So the situation is clearly dire with the banking system. Its opacity is at the root of all these ills. Bitcoin is an incredible game-changer because of the transparency and the decentralization of its network. Bitcoin is the people's currency backed by the people.
Bitcoin is a necessity to stop these illicit practices in the banking system. To understand this, you have to go beyond what the powerful in the current system constantly tell you. You have to dare to step out of your comfort zone to understand that another way is possible: that of Bitcoin.
An alternative system that gives the people of the world the armies to regain control over the fruits of their labor. In a world as uncertain as ours, the guarantees Bitcoin gives you are clearly priceless.
More and more people will realize this in the future, which is why I imagine Bitcoin being able to catch up with gold's market cap by 2030 with the number of users inevitably moving towards the billion-mark. Indeed, more and more people will look for an alternative to the current system as soon as they understand that it is failing and not fixable.
The success of Bitcoin is therefore clearly inevitable. It is only a matter of time.
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Dozens of unfounded accusations are really funny. A successful person, or success, is usually criticized and scribbled for no reason. I'm seeing the same thing on bitcoin right now. Of course, it's not perfect. But it won't be as perfect as people want it to be. Because nothing is perfect.
Neither is their preference for Bitcoin. But they don't make a sound because they're used to it. The same will apply to bitcoin over time.
Risky? Of course. But every investment is risky. Increasing or reducing risk depends on the person.
Fraud also happens in everyday life. Why does he get so many reactions when he's on the Blockchain? Yeah, it's not supposed to be, and it's bad. But being a hypocrite is worse. In time, everything will be fine.
Thanks for the article.
Have a nice day.
Nice one!
I agree that banks are disgrace of current monetary system, and they are able to do anything to attract customers; endless phone calls, SMS/e-mail abuses, meaningless advertisement, sending credit cards out of reason... The list would go on and on, because they feed on people and they are in a race to get as much as customers they can. However, when it comes to user satisfaction they suddenly disappear, if something goes wrong they don't coordinate user-oriented (probably because the thing causes problem for you was beneficial for the bank). I don't want to blame every bank, yet in general most of the banks are doing so.
I truly believe that blockchain technology is a revolution which allows us to become the bank of ourselves enables us to manage our portfolio.
However, I don't agree on one thing. We can never now what are the criminals using to launder-money in the banking systems, I'm sure there are thousands of solutions they are using that we cannot imagine until they get caught. Of course it is not true to say that Bitcoin is the main tool used for criminal purposes, considering only less than 2% of world the world is using blockchain technology, but in proportion I think decent amount of criminals are using it because some of the blockchain networks are hard to track since their infrastructure uses several transactions to finalize.
Thank you for the article.