Bank of America freezes account of former PayPal executive

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Updated on Mar 11, 2020

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Top financial executive locked out and no reason was given for the action.
Good news for cryptocurrency as stakeholders encourage financial exec to consider investing and enjoy the freedom that Bitcoin brings.
Drama with Bank of America as tension rises over arbitrary freezing of account.

It appears that Bitcoin is going to get new support from an unexpected area. From the look of things, the former chief financial officer of PayPal has been locked out of the conventional banking system. In a drama that has now taken over Twitter, Roelof Botha dropped the bombshell that Bank of America actually took the decision to freeze the account. Totally no reason was given for the action that has left the former top bank exec in shock.

After being a customer of @BankofAmerica for 20 years, I received this notice today that they decided to fire me as their customer! With absolutely no explanation…. pic.twitter.com/IJu3peiIWX
— Roelof Botha (@roelofbotha) November 18, 2019

No Reason Whatsoever

Botha clarified the issue as he posted a modified screenshot of a letter. The letter had to do with the freezing of the account. The content of the letter was more a complaint. It said that after being a customer of Bank of America for 20 years, he got a notice. Botha, the recipient of the notice, was fired as a customer of Bank of America and totally no reason was given.

Stakeholders in the cryptocurrency community on Twitter took an interest in the bizarre exchange between a former bank exec and one of the biggest banks in the United States. Some raised the point that even Twitter itself was also fond of just closing people’s accounts for no reason. PayPal was accused of also freezing funds of holders with no apparent reason. Hence, there were those who saw it as irony or a sort of karma being visited upon the former PayPal top shot.

Recently, the company cut services to Pornhub, an adult entertainment platform. The action led to 100,000 workers on the platform being unable to get their payments.

Cryptocurrency Stakeholders Urge Ex-PayPal Boss to Join Them

Even in the past, alarms have been raised concerning the power of centralized agencies in relation to the authority they have over the funds of other people. This fear is not associated with cryptocurrency. With Bitcoin, for example, it is not possible for any third party to restrict access. A semblance of restriction can only occur when a user decides to make use of a wallet that they do have access to the private keys.

In other words, what the Bank of America did by just freezing the account of the former PayPal boss without any reason cannot happen with Bitcoin. In fact, there is a joint initiative named Proof of Keys that admonishes Bitcoin owners not to keep coins on exchanges. The same initiative discourages people from utilizing third-party hosting.

Vinny Lingham is the chief executive officer of CEO and he asked Botha if he had purchased any Bitcoin. This query was soon followed by others like venture capitalist Adam Draper who advised him to also get some cryptocurrency.