Last month, Sweden’s largest precious metal dealer posted a notice that their bank account had been closed without their consent.

Tavex Guld & Valuta posted a notice on June 30th that their bank account had been unilaterally closed. This left the dealer without an efficient way of accepting payments for good, racing to establish a new payment system.

Shut down because of banks pushing for a cashless society

A notice screenshotted from the Tavex website read as follows:

“Best customer,

We hereby announce that as of 15:30, Thursday, June 30, 2016, we can no longer accept bank transfers or bank deposits for gold and silver to our Swedish SEB account.

The reason for this is that SEB – at very short notice – informed us that they will close down our bank account. This decision has, unfortunately, been made without first consulting us, and in addition to state in its notification letter that the decision to close our account due to “a general business decisions,” they have not yet given us any concrete reason why they decided to take this measure.

The banking system in Sweden is operated however vigorously towards a cashless society, as you probably are aware of, and Tavex has, as one of the largest wholesale suppliers of physical notes and investment metals in Sweden, as we see it become a target for the major commercial banks.

With that said, we are working frantically to set up a new payment system that we believe will be operational in two to three weeks.”

At time of writing, the notice appears to be gone.

Bitcoin can’t be revoked or shut down

As opposed to banking systems, Bitcoin does not run the risk of being shut down. Over 6 million account applications were denied by UK banks over the past two years, while US citizens increasingly fear online shopping and other internet activity over privacy concerns. Meanwhile, with demand for tax havens growing, Bitcoin conveniently solves all of the above problems.

Recently, Uber had the same issue in Argentina Tavex experienced in Sweden, with the use of credit cards for payments being unilaterally denied. Thankfully, Uber switched to Xapo Bitcoin debit cards, saving the company from having to shut down Argentine operations.