[Plan in Motion] Banking and FedNow

[Tryphine]

FATCA requires all foreign banks to report the assets of US citizens to the IRS. It's such a pain in the arse for banks that Americans in the UK sometimes have difficulty getting personal accounts.

Prince Vegeta is correct that Null would need a business account. According to the UK government, a UK business bank account generally requires:

• a UK business address
• a company representative living in the UK (usually a director or an employee), who will be an account signatory
• a UK business plan showing why you need a UK business bank account
• a clear identification of all parties who own more than 10% of the business

"I'd like a UK bank account so I can accept donations for my darknet racism forum" isn't going to go down well. It would be twice as much work, questionably legal, and Companies House would likely dox whoever helped him.

I don't know what EU law is like, but I can't imagine it's less stringent. A US bank account seems like the easiest option.

 

[Evil Ash]

I am simply fresh meat with some noob advice, sorry for the long post.

On a similar note as Old Glory Bank, perhaps you could try Portage Bank of Ceylon, MN (although they recently moved to Bellevue, WA). As I was doing research, I stumbled upon several articles posted on their website by a Kevin Johnston, including a few criticizing the whole deplatforming/debanking phenomenon. This guy is not some cubicle monkey or PR middle manager, he is listed on their website right after the CEO as Secretary of the Board and COO Executive Vice President. The bank leadership is definitely overall conservative, but not cowboy conservative like Old Glory Bank.

The bad news is that while their original home of Ceylon was a conservative majority small town of 300, they were purchased by a small group of investors (usually a bad omen) in 2019 and moved their HQ to Bellevue: which is majority liberal with a large population. (100K+). The problem is that their desire to expand might come into conflict with their desire to maintain their free speech protections. However, Johnston is still to this day a member of the bank's leadership.

My advice is to contact this bank. Failing that, you could reach out to Kevin Johnston directly as he might at least offer some sound financial advice, even if under the table. The guy is also a lawyer, if you can believe it. They have business accounts and have expanded to digital banking, so they might offer some options for international businesses.

Otherwise, similar local banks (or credit unions) that still exist in small towns are the best bet. Even if the bank deplatforms you because of threats to their reputation, you could always write a small article for the local town paper about how the town’s local bank bent over to outsider interests; and you will have a nice angry mob that will be more terrifying to these banks then any tech bro/eunuch that poses no physical threat to them.

Here are the articles I mentioned. From there you can navigate the bank itself.
https://portage.bank/2022/10/31/what-is-free-speech-banking/
https://portage.bank/2022/11/17/what-is-reputation-risk/

You could find Johnston’s contact info on the internet on certain websites, but you may need a free account on some of those websites. I would rather avoid posting his info here for his safety.

 

[cybertoaster]

If you're going to do this, bounce it through a wallet on your computer first. Someone can correct me, but I believe coinbase has been closing accounts for sending funds directly from their web ui to one of null's public addresses.

I never do transactions from exchanges, always send to my wallet first.

 

[Secret Messages]

RE: Monero I like tradeogre.com. requires no KYC at all, litecoin/bitcoin in, monero out. Nice and easy.

 

[Null]

RE: Monero I like tradeogre.com. requires no KYC at all, litecoin/bitcoin in, monero out. Nice and easy.

I swear I once saw a form to buy Monero on with a credit card form and nothing else but I lost it

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

Yes, but the IRS requires a 3-member board.

I was on one, it's not a big deal, you just need to hold an annual board meeting and keep records of them, and no one ever asked to see any of it. If it were formed as a pro-humanity group (anti-AI, anti-body modification, pro-free expression, etc.) and the mission statement was not directly related to this site I'm sure you could get two other people who are willing to put their names on the paperwork. It's a clearer moral and ethical mission than Scientology or the Satanic Temple has.

 

[Null]

I'm sure you could get two other people who are willing to put their names on the paperwork.

I've gotten an offer from one guy in Australia who seems competent but nobody I talk to is interested.

 

[LGHDR+]

Oh hell, did the people at that Credit Union I told you about tell you to fuck off? Man, that place was in the reddest of red states, I thought for sure it'd work.

 

[*sigh*]

I might be a financial brainlet for asking this question, but why not:

1. Write a check to CASH
2. Take a picture of the check
3. Mail it/upload the picture of the check to null
4. null uploads the image of the check to his bank(s)
5. Money is in the bank(s)

All bank apps and bank websites I’ve seen support uploading check images, so why wouldn’t this work?

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Let's get a few things straight:

does the average person know what the FedWire service is? No. Do banks advertise the FedWire service to it’s normal customers? Maybe, but I have never seen it.

FedWire is used mostly for larger-scale corporate transfers; average transfer value is about $5-5.5M. It's just for domestic transfers, and it's clunky especially these days - some banks require in-person initiation, and fees can be high, too. It's highly manual and built on ancient architecture.

For most people, ACH (owned by NACHA, a bank consortium) transfers (venmo, PayPal) or RTP (real-time payment via The Clearing House (also owned by a bank consortium) - this is how Zelle operates) are much nimbler for smaller transfers.

ACH transfers have a settlement delay - you can't move received finds to your bank account ftom a processor account until that hapens (usually 1-3 business days, though they have a same-day service now). When you set up instant transfer/instant settlement through a processor like PayPal or Venmo (they charge a transaction fee), you're getting RTP to get the money into your actual bank account instantly.

FedNow is a sort of overlay on the FedWire setup, but nimbler, instant, and always-on. It also has a half-million per-transfer cap, unlike FedWire.

I don’t think any banks will be offering FedNow any time soon. The ones on the list probably just did a test with the Federal Reserve to see if it was possible. Basically, until a bank advertises this on the front of their homepage or app, it won’t be a reality. And it probably won’t be widespread until a bank like Wells Fargo (yes, they are on the list) or Citibank pushes it.

FedNow went live (operational) with 35 banks. It's being pitched at payments customers, and the banks optimize transfers to use fednow or rtp via api.

https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments/solutions/fednow

https://www.bnymellon.com/us/en/insights/all-insights/instant-payments-fednow.html

I assume that payment processors will probably jump on this first. I know that payment processors are not Null’s favorite people, so that it out.

Fednow IS a payment processor.

How FedNow appears to work is that it replaces the overnight true up process with a digital backed currency.

"The FedNow Service is not related to a digital currency."

https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_faq.htm#:~:text=The%20FedNow%20Service%20enables%20individuals,can%20use%20the%20funds%20immediately.

 

[GenociderSyo]

The way FedNow was being discussed by my bank was it was a way to get direct deposit of work checks/social security to people faster since there would not be the 3 day turn around, but the shorter almost instant one.

 

[Null]

"The FedNow Service is not related to a digital currency."

The Federal Reserve also denies being privately owned despite being privately owned.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

This is because my bank is RACIST against Romanians, and requires a phone call to give the account info directly to an employee for manual approval. So what should be a 5mn process took 5 days because week-end and availability and so on.
The bank employee told me they restrict automatic approval of new beneficiaries from certain countries because of high levels of scam (see: RACIST) and unregulated crypto trading (which to be fair was exactly what I was doing, but also what I had been doing with people in the other mentioned countries).

All banks have certain obligations (KYC, CDD, OFAC list search, AML, among others; non-US banks may use some varying terminology, but much of it is analogous at least) that aren't racist, and banks may heighten the minimum requirements or operationalize based on their own risk tolerance. It's data-based risk management and/or determined by entities outside the bank itself. Failure to meet requirements can be expensive. Wells Fargo just got hit in March with a nearly $100M fine by the Fed for sanctions violations.

The Federal Reserve also denies being privately owned despite being privately owned.

They don't "deny" it, exactly, though agree the Fed officially states it is a "mistaken" belief that the Fed is privately owned (some regional fed reserve banks skip the parsing and just lay out the relationship between commercial banks and the Fed) - and they are correct it is not "privately owned" in the same way a regular corporation is privately owned. It's a public-private hybrid structure.

(For those unfamiliar: The Fed comprises 12 regional Federal reserve banks, the Board of Governors (an agency), and the FMOC (Fed Open Market Committee).

The BoG's 7 members are individuals appointed by the (U.S.) President and confirmed by the Senate. Monetary policy is set by the FOMC, which consists of the 7 BoG plus 5 of the 12 presidents of the regional reserve banks (the president of the NY fed reserve bank + a rotating 4 presidents from the others).

The regional fed reserve banks are structured governance-wise similarly to commercial corporations, with shareholders, a board, officers, etc.

The bank-to-Fed connection is that commercial banks are required by law to own stock in the regional fed reserve banks; those stockholders vote for the boards of directors, and the boards hire the presidents, who have those rotating seats on the FOMC.

These regional fed reserve banks do not fully operate like private corporations, however: they are not for profit & net earnings go to the Treasury, not profits going to stockholders in the form of dividends.

In addition, back at the Fed level, unlike a privately-owned organization, the Fed is overseen by and accountable to Congress, though an independent entity (Fed employees are not govt civil service, for example). And the Fed (along with, primarily, the OCC and CFPB (and state agencies)) spends an enormous amount of time digging into nooks and crannies of banks, their operations, risk management, compliance, governance, systems, etc., most of which is never announced publicly but which holds banks accountable in ways no private corporation could. Here are the actions that have been made public; far more happens before settlement agreements are required or money penalties imposed.

Tl; dr: you're right that commercial banks have significant power and indirect input to monetary policy and the Board of Governors, but the Fed is a hybrid entity not owned by anyone, public or private. I get that the structure looks sus (or inappropriate) if someone thought the Fed was or was supposed to be, or should be, free of private input, but the structure is not "private ownership," and the accountability and power to direct what any bank and all banks do is public/governmental in nature. Understand the realpolitik of it and different perspectives on that.

Sorry to send the thread on a side track. Any hope in neobanks/challenger banks? Or connection with other groups that have been debanked (I know you said EFF was not responding)?;this article by Sam Brownback mentions a few.

Also note this. Found here. Obviously did not resolve issues, but I'd be curious if it's been invoked in any kind of action that you know of.

 

[*sigh*]

Another option is to have multiple bank accounts only there for receiving money and then transfer the money into a bank account that’s only to be used for paying bills. If one receiving account gets lost, then the main, bill-paying one will still remain. Regular checking accounts and using Zelle would work just fine.

 

[August Levasseur]

Monero is kind of a pain in the balls to buy though. This was a while back, but Kraken was the only place I could find to get with a card/bank account, and they force you to dox yourself.

More recently monero.com offers to let you use a card, but their site doesn't seem to work right and I could never even get as far as it letting me enter a card number.

I've used localmonero.co to buy small amounts a couple times and it's worked well and was barely harder than getting crypto straight from an exchange. A lot of the top crypto sellers on it are fully automated so you just wait for the bot and follow instructions and it works pretty well, prices generally aren't bad either.

 

[PlumpPimp]

JFC, Null and everyone else trying to understand what FedNow is making my brain hurt.

FedNow is a type of payments rail called a fast payments system. Pre-existing examples of fast payment systems included the NPP in Australia, TIPS in the EU, and the Fast Payment System in the UK. It is characterised by 24/7 instant processing and settlement of payments between consumers, consumers and SMEs, and SMEs. Users don't interact directly with a fast payments system, rather they do it through a bank. i.e. When paying Null through my banking app, I would chose whether or not the payment goes vid FedNow. Null would still need to be a retail bank customer and thus is still at risk of being deplatform. Note, fast payment systems were never designed to protected against deplatforming, only for speed.

This is going to rustle some jimmies, but a CBDC is honestly Null's best option for a deplatform proof payments solution. Since a CBDC would be a public good offering by the federal government, Null would have to piss off a federal governemnt to be deplatformed. I would image that is significantly more difficult than pissing off a corporation and would kick the Total Retward War into the human rights violation saga. Look into the digital euro, the EU's CBDC. The EU is planning to make available a government owned and operated digital wallet/payments app, which will eventually become available to non-EU citizens and will be set up to receive payments from foreign countries and different payment rails.

Unironically, the Europoors are Null's best hope.

 

[Throwing Romans]

JFC, Null and everyone else trying to understand what FedNow is making my brain hurt.



This is going to rustle some jimmies, but a CBDC is honestly Null's best option for a deplatform proof payments solution. Since a CBDC would be a public good offering by the federal government, Null would have to piss off a federal governemnt to be deplatformed. I would image that is significantly more difficult than pissing off a corporation and would kick the Total Retward War into the human rights violation saga. Look into the digital euro, the EU's CBDC. The EU is planning to make available a government owned and operated digital wallet/payments app, which will eventually become available to non-EU citizens and will be set up to receive payments from foreign countries and different payment rails.

Unironically, the Europoors are Null's best hope.

Europe has a lot of hate speech laws though, which this site might occasionally violate (niggers).

 

[AnOminous]

I never do transactions from exchanges, always send to my wallet first.

And arguably you would prefer to have "clean" never before used crypto if you're really paranoid. I think this would be excessive for here, at least if you're U.S.-based, because I doubt the feds seriously give a fuck about much that goes on here other than fedposting, but that would involve mining it or using dodgy things like gambling sites.

Generally, a transfer from BTC to Monero (or just BTC that you never paid USD for to any of the normal exchanges) is probably sufficient for most normal purposes. I don't really consider the feds part of my threat model, although Null probably has cause to take that more seriously.

 

[Casval Rem Deikun]

Hey @Null if you'd like to know ND is in complete conservative control and if you transfer the LLC or at least make a holding company our subsidiary for ND specifically for its laws and the Bank of North Dakota offers a bunch of services to ND based companies, the bar to entry for business accounts aren't that bad they even offer foreign currency transfers. And you should be good to open a regular personal account that can't messed with due to ND laws.
Right now in North Dakota they're trying to pass business friendly bills regarding the internet in the state legislature, also the cost of living is lower compared to the rest of the US and would likely be living in Fargo, the upside is rent and food is cheap and if you wanted to try an attempt again at hosting you could do it in fargo due to the cheap cost of business space and registered agents to choose from in North Dakota.
Also it's a constitutional carry and stand your ground state so you're safe from the confused and dangerous.
It's definitely a state you should consider operating out of especially once they get their internet laws up and going and you decide the ISP/hosting route again you'd at least have state level of legal protection and 230 at the federal level.

 

[Null]

I received a surprising note of acceptance from a bank and now that we are a registered LLC again I can move forward with opening an account. This is a private bank, so if it fails. I will move forward with the BND.