Written by: Austin King, Co-founder of Omni Network
Translated by: Luffy, Foresight News
Recently, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen revealed that many founders are threatened by the banking system. I am one of them: out of fear of retaliation, I have never publicly discussed this matter.
So what is it actually like when it happens to you? My personal first experience was in 2021, when I tried to open the company's first bank account.
The Beginning of the Story
When I was preparing to open our first account, multiple banks rejected me. Every time you try to open a business account, the bank will ask what your company does. If you mention anything related to 'cryptocurrency' or 'Web3', you will be denied. After mentioning these terms and being rejected multiple times, you start to realize what's happening, so I began using phrases like 'early fintech startup'. Eventually, this tactic worked, and I successfully opened a bank account, allowing me to conduct business operations in this country.
Repeated Strikes
Is that really the situation? No, it's a repeated and ongoing process of strikes. Once you have an account, you will realize that having only one account is a significant risk for businesses. You will eventually receive an email with a subject line like this:
You will submit it, but this request doesn't really make much sense because they already have the documents they asked for, yet you still comply with the request to submit documents. The problem is that compliance does not resolve the issue; even if we quickly respond with all the required documents, our account is still arbitrarily frozen.
This account freeze prevented us from issuing paychecks. My team has a lot of trust in me, but when the company cannot issue paychecks, you will definitely start to doubt whether this is a stable place where you can work long-term. When you hear from the boss, 'Honestly, we have the money, we submitted all the required documents almost immediately, and I really believe we are being targeted because we are in the cryptocurrency space,' you can't be sure either. Another example:
Sounds reasonable, right? They just want a few documents and gave us 5 business days. The problem is: sometimes they don't even respond within 5 business days; it's not about submitting documents, but about their approval of the documents. They simply re-request the same documents that have already been submitted without explaining what was wrong with those documents. This strategy reflects how the SEC has stifled cryptocurrency in the U.S. over the past 4 years: unclear rules, operating in a fog, stifled by bureaucratic ambiguity rather than being directly attacked.
We are not the only victims. I have talked to many investors in Omni who found that this situation occurred in many of their investment projects, to the extent that their portfolio support teams actively helped the teams set up multiple independent bank accounts to mitigate risk.
Why can I talk about this now?
Because if someone like Marc Andreessen talks about this issue publicly, I feel the likelihood of being singled out would decrease. I didn't publicly voice my opinion before because I was worried it would pose more risks to me personally and to the business. The main reason I am publishing this article is to provide further evidence that this is a real problem stifling innovation in the U.S. Over the past 4 years, the government has actively pushed cryptocurrency innovation to move overseas. I think this is really dangerous for the U.S. We need to lead in the cryptocurrency space instead of pushing innovation to arbitrary countries like the Bahamas. Cryptocurrency is a technology that has the potential to significantly enhance the autonomy and personal freedom of people around the world. I really can't think of any other technology that aligns with the 'American Dream' as well as cryptocurrency does.