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A negative balance? Just when I was about to withdraw rent money?

Yes, it appeared that someone had attempted to steal from me. And, in the short term, they had succeeded. Someone had written a check in my name for a couple thousand dollars to try to buy a car. Now, mind you, I can’t remember ever using a check in my eight-plus years since opening that bank account. I barely used the account at all since I had started making all my money in Bitcoin. The only reason I was using it this time was to liquidate some cryptocurrency for rent, since I had procrastinated about selling it for cash. But that one small interaction with the banking system was all it took to somehow make me feel its worst inefficiencies. I called the number provided on the website, was on placed on hold for a half-hour, then transferred to another number and another half-hour hold time, until at last I was sent to the third and final banking representative… complete with another 30-minute hold. They agreed to reverse the charge, but said it would take until the end of the business day. After the bank closed, of course.

To summarize: Someone tried to buy a car by scribbling something on a piece of paper I never touched, said it meant that my money was behind it, and some bank just went and gave them more of my money than I had in my account. And I spent almost 100 minutes on the phone and had to wait until the next day to get it reversed. For $12 per month. When I was already using cryptocurrency and getting more functionality than a bank for free.

Read more: http://thedesertlynx.com/why-i-closed-my-bank-account-and-went-all-bitcoin/