Omni联创讲述创业经历：银行系统如何扼杀Cryptocurrency创新？

If you mention anything related to “Crypto Assets” or “Web3”, you will be rejected.

Written by: Austin King, Co-founder of Omni Network

Compiled by Luffy, Foresight News

Recently, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, revealed that many founders have been threatened by the banking system. I am one of them: I have never publicly talked about this for fear of retaliation.

So what does it actually look like when it happens to you? My first personal experience was in 2021 when I was trying to open the first bank account for my company.

The Beginning of the Story

When I was preparing to open our first account, several banks rejected me. Whenever you want to open a business account, the bank will ask what your company does. If you mention anything related to “Crypto Assets” or “Web3”, you will be rejected. After mentioning these terms and being rejected multiple times, you begin to realize what is happening, so I started using phrases like “early-stage financial technology startups”. In the end, this worked, and I successfully opened a bank account, allowing me to conduct business operations in this country.

Repeated Strikes

Is that all there is to it? No, it’s an ongoing and continuous process of setbacks. Once you have an account, you’ll realize that having just one account is a serious risk for businesses. You’ll eventually receive an email with the following subject:

You can open it, but the request doesn’t really make much sense, as they already have the files they requested, but you still comply and submit the files. The problem is, compliance doesn’t solve the issue, even if we quickly respond with all the requested documents, our account can still be frozen arbitrarily.

The account freeze this time has caused us unable to issue salaries. My team trusts me very much, but when the company cannot issue salaries, you will definitely start to doubt whether this is a stable place where you can work long-term. When you hear from the boss, ‘To be honest, we have money, we submitted all the required documents almost immediately, I really believe that we have become a target because we are working in the Crypto Assets industry,’ you are not sure either. Another example:

Sounds reasonable, right? They just want a few documents and gave us 5 working days. The problem is: sometimes they don’t even reply within 5 working days; it’s not a problem of submitting documents, but a problem of approving them. They just ask for the same documents that have already been submitted, without explaining what’s wrong with them. This strategy reflects the SEC’s approach to stifling cryptocurrency in the United States over the past 4 years: unclear rules, operating in the fog, suffocating them with bureaucratic ambiguity instead of directly attacking them.

We are not the only victims. I have spoken to many investors of Omni who have found this situation happening in many of their investment projects, to the extent that their investment portfolio supports the team in actively helping them establish multiple independent bank accounts to drop the risk.

Why can I talk about this now?

Because if someone like Marc Andreessen talks about this openly, I feel like the possibility of me being singled out will drop. I didn’t express my opinion publicly because I was worried that it would bring more risks to me and my business. I am publishing this article primarily to provide further evidence that this is a real problem that is stifling innovation in the United States. Over the past 4 years, the government has actively promoted the transfer of Cryptocurrency innovation overseas. I think it’s really dangerous for the United States. We need to take a leadership role in encryption, not push innovation to any country like the Bahamas. Cryptocurrency is a technology that has the potential to dramatically increase the autonomy and individual freedom of people around the world. I really can’t think of any other technology that fits the “American Dream” as well as Cryptocurrency.