Good news arrives for cryptocurrency exchanges in Chile as the country’s appeals court has ordered the re-opening of their unexpectedly-closed bank accounts.
A Small but Significant Victory
Earlier this month, Bitcoinist reported that Chilean cryptocurrency exchanges Buda, Orionx, and CryptoMarket filed appeals to one of the country’s appeals court following the unexpected closure of their bank accounts from Itau Corpbanca, Bank of Nova Scotia, and state-owned Banco del Estado de Chile.
Guillermo Torrealba, Buda’s co-founder and chief executive officer, had explained to Bloomberg:
They’re killing an entire industry. It won’t be possible to buy and sell crypto in a safe business in Chile. We’ll have to go back five years and trade in person. It seems very arbitrary.
Hopefully the appeals court will see we’re right.
The appeals have been heard, and the court has indeed seen that Torrealba is right.
As reported by Bloomberg Quint today, Buda successfully persuaded a court to order a detente in its dispute with banks.
The South American country’s anti-monopoly court reportedly ordered both Banco del Estado de Chile and Itau Corpbanca to re-open Buda’s accounts. Meanwhile, the exchange’s lawsuit will continue against 8 other banks, in addition to the aforementioned pair, citing the unexpected closure as “arbitrary” and “unjustified.”
Victory!
This should be interpreted as positive news for those worried that the wealthy South American country’s government was making efforts to potentially implement a blanket ban on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading in the country — though it remains unknown whether or not the banks’ closures of the exchanges’ accounts came from above.
Chile’s cryptocurrency exchanges are small fish in the global blockchain sea, but they are important to the country’s (and continent’s) continued growth in what many believe is the future of finance. Before the unexpected account closure, Torrealba’s Buda was only trading about $1 million per day, small change compared to the billions being traded on the world’s larger exchanges.
It will be interesting to see if the court’s decision has any impact on the greater sentiment towards cryptocurrencies from Chilean authorities. As noted by Bloomberg, Itau Corpbanca Chief Executive Officer Milton Maluhy has stated that the cryptocurrency industry needs more regulation — despite claiming his bank supports burgeoning technologies and startup companies.
What do you think about the Chilean appeals court’s decision? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, Pexels, and Wikimedia Commons/Mark Scott Johnson.
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