Australian banks freeze accounts tied to cryptocurrencies

The Sydney Morning Herald reported over the weekend that Cryptocurrency trader and Youtuber Alex Saunders called out National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac Banking Corporation on Twitter for freezing customer accounts and transfers to four different bitcoin exchanges - CoinJar, CoinSpot, CoinBase and BTC Markets.

A spokesman from Commonwealth Bank confirmed the freezes by saying that "because the destination account previously has been connected to a fraud or an attempted fraudulent transaction or is an account used to facilitate payments to Bitcoins or similar virtual currency payment services".