Big Banks vs. Crypto: The Hilarious Battle of Fees and Follies! 😂💰

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What to know:

  • Well, it seems the big banks have decided to play a little game of “let’s make it harder for the little guy” by slapping on hefty fees for accessing account data or moving money. They call it “Operation Chokepoint 3.0,” but I reckon it’s more like “Operation Choke on Your Own Fees!”
  • This little tactic could squeeze the competition tighter than a pair of shoes two sizes too small, making it pricier for folks to transfer their hard-earned cash to those shiny new platforms, as our friend Alex Rampell from a16z pointed out.
  • Rampell and his buddy Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, are not too pleased with this turn of events. They’re raising a ruckus, and rightly so!

It appears that the big banks are pulling a fast one, making it trickier and pricier for the common folk to dabble in the world of fintech and crypto. This, my friends, is what they’re dubbing “Operation Chokepoint 3.0.” Sounds like a bad sequel to a movie nobody wanted to see!

According to our pal Alex Rampell, a General Partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (or a16z for those in the know), these traditional financial institutions are charging fees that would make a pirate blush just to access your own account data or to shuffle your money over to services like Coinbase or Robinhood. It’s like they’re trying to strangle the competition with a noose made of dollar bills!

“Under the Biden administration, we had Operation Chokepoint 2.0, which was all about debanking and deplatforming crypto,” Rampell lamented. “That era has passed, but now the banks are rolling out their own version of Chokepoint 3.0 — charging ludicrous fees to access data or move money to crypto and fintech apps — and, even worse, blocking the apps they don’t fancy,” he added, shaking his fist at the sky.

Now, Chokepoint 2.0 was a fancy term for the debanking of crypto businesses and their executives, all thanks to some regulatory pressure during President Biden’s reign. But once Donald Trump took the helm, that whole debacle fizzled out like a soda left open too long.

JPMorgan’s Shady Shenanigans

Now, let’s talk about JPMorgan Chase, the big fish in this pond. They’ve been singled out for their antics.

According to the good ol’ U.S. law, specifically Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, consumers have the right to access their own financial data. But banks, in their infinite wisdom, are now claiming control over how that data is delivered, sometimes charging fees for the privilege of accessing information as basic as routing and account numbers. It’s like charging you to read your own diary!

Rampell argues that such shenanigans could make transferring funds to alternative platforms as costly as a night out in Vegas, which might just deter folks from doing it. “If it suddenly costs $10 to move $100 into a crypto account,” he quipped, “maybe fewer people will do it. And if JPM and others can block consumers from connecting their own freely chosen crypto and fintech apps to their bank accounts, they effectively eliminate competition.”

Tyler Winklevoss, the co-founder of Gemini, echoed Rampell’s sentiments, claiming that JPMorgan’s fees for access to customer banking data will “bankrupt” fintech platforms. “This is the kind of egregious regulatory capture that kills innovation, hurts the American consumer, and is bad for America,” he declared, waving his arms like a man possessed.

Now, JPMorgan hasn’t directly addressed the platform, but they did respond to the criticism. They told Forbes that nearly 2 billion monthly requests for user data come from third parties, and by charging fees, they aim to curb misuse. Sounds like a classic case of “we’re just trying to protect you, dear consumer!”

Meanwhile, Rampell is calling on the Trump administration to put a stop to these practices before they become the norm among the rest of the financial institutions. “In a perfect world, consumers would vote with their wallets. But every bank will likely do this, and getting a new banking charter takes years. Many banks have hostages, not customers,” he lamented.

“We don’t need a new law; we just need the administration to prevent this callous and manipulative attempt to kill competition and consumer choice,” he added, shaking his head in disbelief.

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2025-08-02 21:53