Silicon Valley Bank says no to Bitcoin businesses
bitcorati.com
bitcorati.com
Just accept the fact that a bank has decided bitcoin isn't worth the risk yet. Don't act like they spit in the face of social justice and all that is right in this world.
(a) People trying to avoid the fees associated with other forms of electronic payments, who basically rely on services that exchange Bitcoin payments for fiat currency.
(b) The services that people in category (a) rely on.
(c) People who for various reasons want a currency without any government, bank, or legal code.
You are not seeing the ludicrous claims about Bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time from the people in categories (a) or (b). It is either the people in category (c) or else the speculators who want to promote the hype because it makes them money.
Low/no trust contracts, an inflation hedge that is instant, and spendable and transferrable like cash (hi Argentina), autonomous agents that can transact freely (reddit.com/r/bitcointip), brain wallets, the ability to transfer > 10k without paperwork, micro-payments are finally viable... Just to name what my limited mind can conjure. Not to mention the things it seems like you're dismissing as reasons to be extremely bullish--that the transfer fees of Western Union is on the order of 10% and paypal freezes funds.
... over the internet.
Also, are you less than 15 years old? Because most of the social changes brought about by the internet have happened in the last 20 years or so. The first web browser has only just hit 20.
I believe the rather selfish definition of 'times' was rather the issue I was pointing out.
That was ~15 years ago, maybe they are better now, I have no idea.
When I was a client them they did organize "meetups with VCs/lawyers", but for the most part those events were mostly designed to pander to the guests' egos and I presume make them feel valued enough to drive their companies towards SVBank for higher-ticket services, like large credit lines.
(And honestly, considering that Bitcoin transactions approximate anonymous cash transactions, companies with bitcoin assets will scare the hell out of the US banking regulators and make it difficult to do wire fraud detection and proper auditing)
Also, somebody should start a Bank of Bitcoin. There's no reason why the benefits of banking couldn't be applied to bitcoin.
I used to work in a major affiliate marketing ad network, and they have these events where the most successful affiliates are taken on a vacation. One time, this took place at the company headquarters, so I spent a little bit of time getting to know them.
Not hating, but what a bunch of unscrupulous rogues they were! To say they were a pack of untrustworthy hooligans would be politely understating the point, which is exactly what I will do.