Bank accounts were unreasonably cancelled, Bitcoin information website CoinJournal announced that it would suspend coverage of banking blockchain projects

Bitcoin information platform CoinJournal announced that its bank account tied to Bitcoin was suddenly cancelled by Barclays, a large financial institution. As a result, CoinJournal decided to immediately suspend reporting on blockchain projects of various banks and financial institutions.

On Thursday, Coinjournal reporter Kyle Torpey tweeted that the bank appeared to have shut down their accounts linked to Bitcoin.

The CoinJournal team said:

We have never received an official statement from Barclays Bank, and they cancelled our account without a reasonable explanation. However, this account usually collects advertising fees in US dollars and then converts them into Bitcoins; or pays employee salaries and some daily expenses of the company in the form of Bitcoins.

Coinjournal founder Oliver Carding said they were surprised when they first received the news.

We don't do a lot of business... the amounts involved are small, but it's surprising that they still consider our account to be highly risky.

Likewise, this week it was revealed that Barclays had blocked bitcoin trading, and the bank has a habit of closing accounts involved in bitcoin trading.

Got punched?

Since 2015, large banks and financial institutions have been competing with Bitcoin by launching independent blockchain projects. According to Reuters, banks have spent more than 15亿美元on the blockchain market. However, the financial industry has not been able to launch even a single commercial use case for a private blockchain network.

Faced with pressure from investors and consumers, banks have always considered Bitcoin and other companies involved in cryptocurrency businesses as potential threats. The CoinJournal account was closed without prior notice, and it is likely that it is a victim of the competition between banks and Bitcoin.

Similar incidents occurred in late 2015 and early this year, when domestic banks and large financial institutions in Australia arbitrarily shut down the accounts of bitcoin startups and exchanges.

Vague response

CoinJournal told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview that when Barclays closed their account, it gave a vague explanation that their account violated the bank's user terms.

CoinJournal is just a Bitcoin media, and its core business is to provide the latest neutral reports to the Bitcoin community. The company rarely conducts Bitcoin transactions or investments, which is very different from Bitcoin exchanges and wallet platforms.

However, Barclays Bank still chose to close their accounts.

How ironic!

Barclays is a member of the R3CEV consortium, which aims to unite the world's major commercial banks and financial institutions to jointly research blockchain technology.

R3 members have a common goal in the implementation and deployment of blockchain technology. Despite investing nearly 4亿美元every year, R3 has not been able to develop a decent blockchain product.

Despite the competition, banks and financial institutions must acknowledge that their projects are based on Bitcoin’s architecture and are replicas of Bitcoin, so they must respect digital currency startups.

Instead, they choose to censor innovation, prevent the popularization of digital currencies, and set obstacles for the development of start-ups, just to increase the exposure of their own private chain projects.

The CoinJournal team said:

Barclays’s move shows that it is a joke to expect the banking industry to develop innovative technologies when it is stuck in its ways. Therefore, we have decided not to report on blockchain projects by banks or banking consortiums any longer.