I had an interesting email a day or so back, from HSBC bank. In it, they explained the limits they were putting on crypto-related transactions.

Here's a copy of the text of the email, with all identifying names and logos removed, of course;

They also had the usual blurb at the bottom of the email about how the contents were confidential, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Spot the loophole ! If I wasn't the addressee, I couldn't copy, forward, disclose or use any part of it. But I am the addressee, so according to their logic, I can copy forward or disclose it. As for confidentiality, I can imagine they've sent the same email to every single account holder who has dabbled in crypto, or maybe even every account holder they have, so I doubt it's hugely confidential, and the contents aren't massively private or controversial.

I've got mixed feelings about this email.

On the one hand, it's clearly been written with maximum scare tactics in mind, aiming to discourage people from investing in crypto. Yes, it's an unregulated field and you can lose all your money. But the same goes for the stock market. I regard fiat money as even less secure than crypto; after all, it's not limited to 21,000,000 units, they can make as much of it as they like and inflate their debt away, and since coming off the gold standard, fiat money has effectively been secured by nothing more than the promises of politicians. We know what they are worth !

But on the other hand, they are laying out clear limits to how we're allowed to spend our money (that technically becomes the bank's money as soon as we hand it over to them - we just become unsecured creditors of the bank).

I guess my main issue is one of trust. If the bank sticks to what they say, all well and good. I'm not in a position to invest £10,000 a year in crypto, let alone in a rolling 30 day period ! But after the recent de-banking scandals here in the UK where banks have been closing people's accounts based on their social media and political views, or because they are a business which still accepts cash, trust that banks will operate transparently is at an all-time low.

HSBC are about average in terms of bank trustworthiness. They haven't pulled the absolute shenanigans of Coutts, NatWest and RBS, but I suspect they are by no means totally clean handed.

My expectation is that as time goes on, the limits will be slashed and people will have accounts closed without explanation if they do put too much into crypto. So I feel it's worth trickling funds consistently into crypto as part of an overall investment portfolio while it's still possible, and out of the grabby little hands of the banks !

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Note: This post was first published by me in LeoFinance on Hive

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