Venture capital titan Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is warning that the banks may be initiating a new crackdown on the crypto industry.
In the firm’s latest Fintech Newsletter, a16z general partner Alex Rampell says that crypto may be looking at “Chokepoint 3.0” – or a sequel to the Biden administration’s attempts to debank and deplatform crypto companies, commonly referred to as Operation Chokepoint 2.0.
Rampell is referring to JPMorgan’s recent decision to begin charging fees to crypto and fintech companies to access simple data about the bank’s customers, like routing codes or account numbers.
Rampell says the new fees, which are “insanely high,” are about strangling the competition, not about generating new revenue.
“JPMorganChase is an $800 billion company. Make no mistake: this isn’t about a new revenue stream. It’s about strangling competition. And if they get away with this, every bank will follow…
The crazy thing is that sometimes this data is just your account number and routing code. That’s right: information that’s printed on the bottom of every check. And yet, if delivered electronically, somehow banks are asserting that it should come with tremendous fees – paid to banks that were collectively bailed out by taxpayers a mere 17 years ago.
If it suddenly costs $10 to move $100 into a Coinbase or Robinhood account, maybe fewer people will do it. Or if it costs $10 to get a cheaper loan from a fintech, maybe you’ll be forced to take a crappier one from JPM. 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.”
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