In Australia we have this Banking Cartel commonly known as “The Big 4”. They aren’t the only banks in the country but if you look at the Top Companies by Market Capitalization on the Australian Stock Exchange these 4 behemoths occupy 4 of the Top 6 spots as the biggest companies in the country and they utterly dominate the market here. It still baffles me how the biggest companies in a country can be Banks – who produce nothing – but if you’re familiar with Australian idiocy it shouldn’t really surprise. We don’t really do anything smart in this country. We have Mining, Agriculture and Banking but we outsourced what little Manufacturing and Innovation we had some decades ago. We have become almost the definition of a Banana Republic.
I digress. Everyone in Crypto knows that this new blockchain technology wave poses an existential threat to the Legacy Financial Mafia System. For many years we’ve seen bankers around the world spouting anti-Crypto rhetoric, but we’re getting closer to the pointy end now in Australia. I always expected that at some point they’d try to shut the exits to this dumpster fire in an attempt to prevent people getting their money out and that’s what I think we’re seeing now. This week the National Australia Bank has decided to join its peers in The Big 4 cartel to block transfers to “certain crypto exchanges” as they are “trying to protect their customers from scams”. It’s pretty weak spin really and they won’t tell us exactly WHICH exchanges are being blocked. We have to figure that out ourselves and no doubt the list is entirely discretionary. Their statement included this little nugget :-
Translation – We aren’t going to tell you who we’ve blocked. You will find out who we’ve blocked when we actually block you.
Now there ARE some Crypto exchanges here in Australia who ARE regulated and accredited by the Australian Government and hopefully they are exempt from having transfers blocked for now, however it’s important to examine the language and spin being used by the banks here. They are not accusing the exchanges themselves of being scammers. They are citing scams in the crypto space and implying that these exchanges have scam coins listed and/or the exchanges are being used by criminals. They are claiming to be protecting us from ourselves. This is Nanny State Logic at it’s finest and using this logic there are a number of accredited exchanges in Australia with shitcoin and scamcoin listings so to me it’s pretty clear that we’re in the midst of a crackdown and the Banks are looking to bar the Exits.
Of course Binance is at the top of the Persona Non Grata list of exchanges here in Australia after they recently ran afoul of our regulators - even though they are one of the biggest players internationally. Then we have relatively new local guys like Swyftx who are government accredited but appear to just be middle-men peddling shitcoins. If this is really about protecting customers then Swyftx are surely in the crosshairs too.
The ground is shifting in Australia so just remember – If you don’t hold it you don’t own it and if you want to get out of the Legacy Financial System to hide out in Crypto then you probably need to do it soon because the doors are closing. The train is leaving the station. Toot! Toooot!!