Cardano founder says Credit Suisse denied him an account because crypto was ‘too dangerous’
Amid a wide-reaching financial crisis that has affected several banking giants, including Credit Suisse (SWX: CSGN), which had to be sold to survive, the cryptocurrency market seems to be holding just fine, and Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson shared an anecdote involving his experience with the now-struggling bank.
As it happens, Credit Suisse refused to open an account for Hoskinson back in 2014, when he was the CEO of Ethereum (ETH) and based in Switzerland, with the explanation that cryptocurrencies were too dangerous and unstable to work with, as he retold the story in his podcast streamed on March 20.
Anti-crypto attitude backfires
Specifically, the Cardano founder pointed out the irony of all the troubles that Credit Suisse, and the banking sector as a whole, was going through currently, in the context of its disapproving attitude toward crypto and Hoskinson himself nine years before:
“The Credit Suisse people said, ‘oh, too dangerous, crypto, we couldn’t possibly consider, it would be so unstable, and so terrible, and we have a reputation to protect, we’re here for the long term, we’ve been here for over 150 years, and we couldn’t embrace this crypto thing,’ and lo and behold, who’s buying Credit Suisse – UBS – only if the Swiss government bails them out.”
According to him, “the banking system (…) is falling apart (…) predictably because it’s always been a Ponzi scheme” based on taking “other people’s money” and using it “to multiply and create money out of thin air, give it to people all around the world and then you make windfall profits from it until people get a little shaky, in which case you socialize your losses and give those losses to society, and this is what’s happened for years in the banking industry.”
Adding to the irony of the bank’s current state and its historical attitude toward crypto, it is also worth mentioning that the former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam declared Bitcoin (BTC) “the very definition of a bubble” back in November 2017, arguing that “the only reason (…) to buy or sell Bitcoin is to make money.”
Meanwhile, the Credit Suisse stock has continued to tank as the UBS merger failed to quell investor fears, declining nearly 65% in the previous five days and almost 70% on its monthly chart, as per the latest Google Finance data obtained by Finbold on March 21.
Watch the entire video below: