Operation Choke Point 2.0: How US Regulators Fight Bitcoin With Financial Censorship
“We hope to close the access to the banking system that mass marketing fraudsters enjoy - effectively putting a choke hold on it…”
by Peter Chawaga via BitcoinMagazine.com
The reason that we are focused on financial institutions and payment processors is because they are the so-called bottlenecks, or choke-points, in the fraud committed by so many merchants that victimize consumers and launder their illegal proceeds,” Bresnickat explained to the club.
“We hope to close the access to the banking system that mass marketing fraudsters enjoy - effectively putting a choke hold on it…”
This concerted effort, later labeled “Operation Choke Point”, targeted a wide range of business categories, including ammunition sales, drug paraphernalia, payday loans, dating services, pornography, telemarketing, tobacco sales, and government grants. This broad application of financial exclusion ultimately prompted multiple lawsuits and federal investigations into the conduct of both the DOJ and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as well as harsh criticism from all corners.
“The clandestine Operation Choke Point had more in common with a purge of ideological foes than a regulatory enforcement action”, wrote Frank Keating, a former governor of Oklahoma who served in the DOJ during the Reagan administration, in a 2018 editorial for The Hill. “It targeted wide swaths of businesses with little regard for whether legal businesses were swept up and harmed. In fact, that seemed to be the goal.”
In 2017, the Trump administration’s DOJ wrote a letter to Congress indicating that Operation Choke Point was officially over. In 2018, the FDIC promised to limit its personnel’s ability to “terminate account relationships” and to put “additional training” into place for its examiners.
But in the years since the federal government so blatantly demonstrated its interest in dictating access to banking services and its power to do so deliberately with little or no consequences, many feel that little has changed.
BANK RUNS, WITH BIAS
On March 8, 2023, it was announced that the cryptocurrency-focused institution Silvergate Bank would be voluntarily liquidated by its holding company. The bank had been focused on serving cryptocurrency clients since 2013 when its CEO Alan Lane first invested in bitcoin. In 2022, it had acquired the technology behind Meta’s failed stablecoin project, Diem, with hopes of launching its own dollar-backed token. As the cryptocurrency market declined in late 2022, marked by the collapse of one of its biggest clients in cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the bank’s stock price plummeted. It likely did not help that at the same time, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Roger Marshall, and John Kennedy asked Silvergate to disclose details of its financial relationship with collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Soon after, on March 10, 2023, almost ten years to the day from Bresnickat’s public detailing of Operation Choke Point, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was seized by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and placed under FDIC receivership, marking what was then the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Since 2021, the bank had been increasing its long-term securities holdings but, as the market value of these assets deteriorated amid U.S. dollar inflation and Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, it was left with unrealized losses. Simultaneously, its customers, many of whom were prominent businesses within the cryptocurrency industry and were similarly strained by economic conditions, were withdrawing their money. On March 8, 2023, SVB announced that it had sold more than $21 billion worth of securities, borrowed another $15 billion, and was planning an emergency sale to raise yet another $2.25 billion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this sparked a run on its remaining funds, totaling some $42 billion in withdrawals by March 9, 2023. On Sunday, March 12, state and federal authorities stepped in; customers of Signature Bank had withdrawn more than $10 billion.
Since 2018, Signature Bank had maintained a focus on cryptocurrency businesses, with some 30% of its deposits coming from the sector by early 2023. Signature Bank had also accrued a large proportion of uninsured deposits, worth some $79.5 billion and constituting almost 90% of its total deposits. It was holding relatively little cash on hand — only about 5% of its total assets (compared to an industry average of 13%) — so it was poorly prepared for a run on crypto-friendly banks spurred by SVB’s issues. On March 12, 2023, the New York State Department of Financial Services closed Signature Bank and placed it under FDIC receivership as it faced a mountain of withdrawal requests. At the time, this represented the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Following their seizures of SVB and Signature Bank, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC described the takeovers as “decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system”. But others suggested the actions, particularly against Signature Bank, signified a blatant reemergence of the prejudice displayed during Operation Choke Point and connected to a larger effort to stymie cryptocurrency businesses.
“I think part of what happened was that regulators wanted to send a very strong anti-crypto message”, Barney Frank, a Signature Bank Board member and former congressman who helped draft the seminal “Dodd-Frank Act” to overhaul financial regulation following the Great Recession, told CNBC in March 2023. “We became the poster boy because there was no insolvency based on the fundamentals.”
Following an FDIC announcement that Flagstar Bank would assume all of Signature Bank’s cash deposits except for those “related to the digital-asset banking businesses”, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal announced that Frank was right to call out this bias.
“This confirms Mr. Frank’s suspicions — and ours — that Signature’s seizure was motivated by regulators’ hostility toward crypto”, the board wrote. “That means crypto companies will have to find another bank to safeguard their deposits. Many say that government warnings to banks about doing business with crypto customers is making that hard.”
Kenny Palurintano is a voluntaryist author, activist, vegan chef, nomad and sage. He wanders the planet with a backpack and a decade-old laptop running Windows 7, and barely smart phone, making an outsized impact in every place he lands. His knowledge spans anarchist thought to crypto to hip hop to health. He facilitates events that combine spiritual improvement and the leading artists of the liberty movement. He creates community and brings the vibe from the Rainbow Gathering to the White Rose. He can be found on Odysee at https://odysee.com/@palurintano:d and will be at the Greater Reset in Morelia, Mexico in January with Etienne, Derrick Broze, Ramiro Ramani, and more! The Art of Liberty Foundation is pleased to offer a collection of his writings in the Government-Scam.com/Store
Etienne de la Boetie2 is the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation, the author of “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! and the editor of the Art of Liberty Daily News on Substack and Five Meme Friday, which delivers hard-hitting voluntaryist memes and the best of the alternative media. All his important links can be found at LinkTr.ee/ArtOfLiberty
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