De-Banking Unmasked: Podcast Sparks Wave of Testimonies Against Banks

“THERE'S A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT THAT SAYS THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T RESTRICT YOUR SPEECH, BUT THERE'S NO CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT THAT SAYS THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T DE-BANK YOU” - MARC ANDREESON

Venture capitalist and software engineer, Marc Andreeson tells Joe Rogan about the horrors of what it's been like to not be a Communist during the OBrandon Regime.

The abuse of power within unaccountable and Unconstitutional Federal Agencies has become so extreme, the stories are almost unbelievable.

I believe them, because I've personally lived them.

After having already been de-platformed by most of the Big Tech companies without any explanation (which sux when you're an online business) I was de-banked by Venmo, as recently as April of this year. They claimed that my account was "inactive", when I had logged in just a few weeks before, having just added it to my website as a donation option. The money was sent to New York State's Unclaimed Funds.

At least Joe Rogan is putting a spotlight on this stuff, now.

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TRANSCRIPT

Marc Andreeson: So look, this goes back to what we were talking about before, like, it is time to carve this government back in size and scope. It's time to take the overall, you know, you could talk about distribution of taxes, but it's time to take the overall tax load down, it's time to take the spending down, it's time to get the government out of the position of deciding who gets money, it's time to unleash economic growth.

Joe Rogan: Elon explained that there's more agencies than there have been years of the United States.

Marc Andreeson: Correct. Yeah, 450 federal agencies – and two new ones a year! And then, my favorite twist is we have this thing called "Independent Federal Agencies".

So like, for example, we have this thing called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, CFPB, which was the – it's sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency that she gets to control. And it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants, right?

And if you read the Constitution, like, there is no such thing as "Independent Agency". And yet, there it is!

Joe Rogan: What does her agency do?

Marc Andreeson: Whatever she wants.

Joe Rogan: What does it do, though?

Marc Andreeson: Well, basically terrorize financial institutions, prevent new competition; new startups that want to compete with the big banks.

Joe Rogan: Really?

Marc Andreeson: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: How so?

Marc Andreeson: Just terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services.

Joe Rogan: Can you give me an example?

Marc Andreeson: You know, de-banking. This is where a lot of the de-banking comes from; is these agencies. So, "de-banking" is when you, as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system.

Joe Rogan: Like they did to Kanye.

Marc Andreeson: Exactly. Like they did to Kanye. My partner, Ben's father, has been de-banked.

Joe Rogan: Really?

Marc Andreeson: We had an employee –

Joe Rogan: For what?

Marc Andreeson: For having the wrong politics,

Joe Rogan: What?

Marc Andreeson: For saying "unacceptable things". Under current banking regulations, OK – here's a great thing – under current banking regulations, after all the reforms of the last 20 years, there's now a category called a "Politically Exposed Person", PEP. And if you are a PEP, you are required by financial regulators to kick them out of your bank. You're not allowed to have them.

Joe Rogan: But what if you're politically on the Left?

Marc Andreeson: Well, that's fine.

Joe Rogan: No. Really?

Marc Andreeson: Because they're not "politically exposed".

Joe Rogan: So no one on the Left gets de-banked?

Marc Andreeson: I have not heard of a single instance of anyone on the Left getting de-banked.

Joe Rogan: Can you tell me what the person that you know did, what they said that got them de-banked?

Marc Andreeson: Oh, well, I mean, David Horowitz is Right Wing [who used to be on the Left]. You know, he's pro-Trump. I mean, he's said all kinds of things. You know, he's been very anti-Islamic terrorism. He's been very worried about migration, all these things.

Joe Rogan: And they de-banked him for that?

Marc Andreeson: Yeah, they de-banked him. So you get kicked out of your bank account, you get kicked out of the … You can't do credit card transactions. By the way, you can't run –

Joe Rogan: How is that legal?

Marc Andreeson: Well, exactly. So this is the thing. And so, and then you go to this thing of like, well, there's no – this is where the government and the companies get intertwined, back to your Fascism point, which is there's a Constitutional amendment that says the government can't restrict your speech, but there's no Constitutional amendment that says the government can't de-bank you.

Right? And so, if they can't do the one thing, then they do the other thing. And then they don't have to de-bank you. They just have to put pressure on the private company banks to do it.

And then, the private company banks do it, because they're expected to. But the Government gets to say, "We didn't do it. It was the private company that did it."

And of course, JP Morgan can decide who they want to have as customers, of course, right? Is their private company. And so, it's this sleight-of-hand that happens.

So it's basically, it's a privatized sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens the same thing that we do to Iran, just kick you out of the financial system.

And so, this has been happening to all the crypto entrepreneurs in the last four years. This has been happening to a lot of the fintech entrepreneurs, anybody trying to start any kind of new banking service, because they're trying to protect the big banks. And then, this has been happening, by the way, also in legal fields of economic activity that they don't like.

And so, a lot of this started about 15 years ago, with this thing called Operation Choke Point, where they decided to, as marijuana started to become legal, as prostitution started to become legal, and then guns, which there's always a fight about.

Under the Obama administration, they started to de-bank legal marijuana businesses, escort businesses, and then gun shops, just like your gun manufacturers. And, just like: "You're done, you're out of the banking system."

And so, if you're running a medical marijuana dispensary in 2012, guess what? You're doing your business all in cash, because you literally can't get a bank account, you can't get a visa terminal, you can't process transactions, you can't do payroll, you can't do Direct Deposit, you can't get insurance. You've been sanctioned, none of that stuff is available.

And then, this administration extended that concept to apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and then just, generally political opponents. Yeah, so that's been super pernicious.

Joe Rogan: I wasn't aware of that.

Marc Andreeson: Oh, 100%. So, it was Operation Choke Point 1.0, was 15 years ago, against the pot and the guns. Choke Point 2.0 is, primarily against their political enemies, and then to their disfavored tech startups. And it's hit the tech world, like we've had like 30 founders de-banked in the last four years.

Joe Rogan: Really?!

Marc Andreeson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been a big, recurring pattern.

Joe Rogan: 30?

Marc Andreeson: This is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump: it's like, we just can't live in this world. We can't live in a world where somebody starts a company that's a completely legal thing, and then, they literally get sanctioned, right, and embargoed by the United States Government, through a completely unaccountable – by the way, no Due Process, none of this is written-down, there's no rules, there's no court. There's no decision process. There's no appeal. Who do you appeal to, right? Like who do you go to, to get your bank account back, right?

Joe Rogan: God!

Marc Andreeson: You know, and then there's also the civil asset forfeiture side of it, which is, right the other side, and that doesn't happen to us, but that happens to people in a lot of places now, who get arrested, and all of a sudden, you know, the State takes their money.

Joe Rogan: Yes, that happens to people if they get pulled over and they have a large amount of cash, in some states.

Marc Andreeson: Yeah, right. Or, you know, there'll be, there've been, you know, well-publicized examples of like, you know, there was like, you know, there'll be some investigation into like, you know, safe deposit boxes, and the next thing you know, the Feds have seized all the contents of the safe deposit boxes, and that stuff never gets returned.

And so, it's this, and this is when, you know, this is when Trump says "the Deep State", you know, like the way we would describe it is it's "administrative power".

It's political power being administered, not through legislation, right? So there's no defined law that covers this. It's not through regulation, right? There's nothing you can, you can't go sue a regulator to fix this. It's not through any kind of Court Judgment. It's just raw power. It's just raw, administrative power.

It's the government or politicians, just deciding that things are going to be a certain way, and then they just apply pressure until they get it.

Joe Rogan: So what happens to those 30 tech people that you know?

Marc Andreeson: They go into a different field, like, try to do something different and try to get, you know –

Joe Rogan: Complete upending of your life.

Marc Andreeson: Yeah, complete upending of your life and try to change your life, try to get out of the – try to get away from the Eye of Sauron - try to get out of whatever zone got you into this and keep applying for new bank accounts at different banks and hope that, at some point a bank will say, "OK, you know, it's OK. We've checked and it's now alright."

Joe Rogan: Whoa.

Marc Andreeson: But there's no –

Joe Rogan: So what do they do with their money? Like what happens?

Marc Andreeson: I mean, you go to cash. I mean.

Joe Rogan: You go to cash.

Marc Andreeson: You can't have a bank account, yeah.

Joe Rogan: So where do you put it?

Marc Andreeson: I don't know. Under your mattress. Under your mattress.

Joe Rogan: (Face drops)

Marc Andreeson: (Laughs) Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan: That is so insane. Yeah. So if someone has $30 million in the bank and they get de-banked.

Marc Andreeson: Diamonds, art, I don't know, go overseas, somewhere?

Joe Rogan: Holy sh¡t!

Marc Andreeson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And just like, it just, it just happens. And again, it's really, really important. There's no fingerprints. Like there's no. There's no person, who –

Joe Rogan: Right. There's no stick above the strings.

Marc Andreeson: Yeah, exactly. Right. It just happened. And we can trace it back, because we understand exactly – we know the politicians involved and we know how the Agencies work – and we know how the pressure is applied and we know that the banks get phone calls and so forth.

And so we, we can loosely – we understand the flow of power, as it happens. But when you're on the receiving end of this, your specific instance of it, like you can't trace it back and there's nothing you can do about it.

Joe Rogan: So these, what are the instances? Like what is the company, what are they trying to do and how do they run afoul?

Marc Andreeson: Well, all the crypto startups in the last basically four years. So, you remember, the crypto thing got like really, you know, everybody got excited and like, NFTs and like all that stuff – and then it just like stopped.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Marc Andreeson: And the reason it stopped is because basically every crypto founder, every crypto startup, they either got de-banked, personally and forced out of the industry – or their company got de-banked and so, it couldn't keep operating. Or they got prosecuted, charged, or they got threatened with being charged.

This is a fun twist. It was a fun little twist: The, the SEC, so the SEC sort of has been trying to kill the crypto industry under Biden and this has been a big issue for us, because we're the biggest crypto and crypto startup investor.

The SEC can investigate you, they can subpoena you, they can prosecute you, they can do all these things. But they don't have to do any of those things to really damage you.

All they have to do is they issue what's called a "Wells Notice". And the Wells Notice is a notification that "You may be charged at some point in the future."

You're on-notice, that you might be doing something wrong and they might be coming after you, at some point in the future.

Joe Rogan: Oh my God.

Marc Andreeson: Okay. So –

Joe Rogan: Terrifying. That's the eye.

Marc Andreeson: The Eye of Sauron is on you, OK? Now trying to be a company with a Wells Notice, doing business with anybody else.

Joe Rogan: Oh my God.

Marc Andreeson: Right. Try to work with a big company. Try to get access to a bank. Try to do anything.

Joe Rogan: So that's when they support DEI initiatives and they.

Marc Andreeson: Yeah. Well, then the SEC, the SEC, under Biden became a direct application of – exactly – so: DEI, they started, they did a lot with that and then ESG, all the ESG stuff – and ESG is a very malleable concept and they piled all kinds of new requirements into that.

So through that, through this process, the SEC could basically just simply dictate what companies do, with no accountability, at all.

Like there's no, you know, there's no oversight, there are hearings where they get yelled-at, but like nothing changed, nothing ever happened in a hearing that ever changed anything.

Joe Rogan: Wow.

Marc Andreeson: It was just the raw application of power. Right. And so, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And this is your friends, this has happened to?

Marc Andreeson: Oh yeah, for sure. Like I said, we had an employee who got de-banked, because he had "crypto" in his job title. He was doing crypto policy for us and his bank booted him, because he, because they did a "screen across", it's what they told us is they "did a screen across their customer base".

Joe Rogan: Just anyone with crypto?

Marc Andreeson: Because anybody with crypto became a Politically Exposed Person.

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Debanking Unmasked: Podcast Sparks Wave of Testimonies Against Banks

by Bitcoin.com

Social media has been flooded with firsthand accounts, as individuals share their experiences of being forcibly excluded from the modern financial system. It’s a groundswell of voices calling for action and rethinking reliance on banks, creating a riveting dialogue about financial independence. The buzz began when Andreessen Horowitz’s Marc Andreessen joined Joe Rogan’s podcast for a deep dive into the topic.

During their chat, Rogan asked Andreessen about the role of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Andreessen didn’t hold back, describing how such political entities “basically terrorize finance, terrorize financial institutions, prevent fintech, prevent new competition, [and prevent] new startups that want to compete with the big banks.” He explained how they wield a tactic called “de-banking,” using political influence to strong-arm banks into cutting ties with crypto and tech entrepreneurs.

After the podcast, crypto founders flocked to the social media platform X to recount their de-banking ordeals. Stories poured in, gaining momentum as more users chimed in. Some even began rallying behind the hashtag “#debankthebanks,” urging others to pull their money out of major financial institutions. Indian-American conservative commentator, author, and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza shared his own story of being de-banked.

D’Souza explained:

I was de-banked by Chase. Walked in one day to discover they had closed my account. The local branch couldn’t understand it since I was a good and known customer. They said the order came from the top with no explanation given or even available!

Sasha Hodder, founder of Hodder Law Firm, shared the story of how her law practice was abruptly dropped by its bank. “My law firm was de-banked in 2018 with just a 30-day notice. Many of my clients dealt with the same challenge, forcing them to go full crypto. Hearing Rogan and Andreessen bring this issue into mainstream conversation is good, maybe things are really going to change,” Hodder posted.

Even though the Andreessen and Rogan interview aired last week, the conversation showed no signs of slowing down over the weekend. On Nov. 29, Andreessen doubled down, posting a lengthy thread packed with links to stories about de-banking from prominent outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Pirate Wires, Politico, and others. He even revealed that President-elect Donald Trump’s wife and son had been de-banked. “Which bank?” Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman asked.

Ackman’s X thread quickly became a hotbed of accusations against specific banks. “I’d bet it’s woke Wells Fargo or BofA,” one commenter speculated. Another chimed in, “We need to know which bank so we can all pull our money out. If they did it to one person, they’ll do it to others.” Some commenters noted that this type of thing also took place in Canada. “This was rampant in Canada. Many banks were de-banking clients for political views,” one person explained in Ackman’s post.https://media.aso1.net/js/ifr.html#id=125723

Whatever the case, Andreessen’s chat with Joe Rogan about the de-banking issue flung the Overton window wide open for public debate. People are paying attention, and they’re not happy about political forces twisting the arms of private banks to serve their agendas. The U.S. government and Biden administration’s involvement in “de-banking” is deeply immoral and economically destructive. In a free society, the purpose of financial institutions is to voluntarily serve customers based on mutual agreement, not to act as instruments of political coercion.

By using regulatory bodies like the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to reportedly manipulate banking practices, the state and politicans infringe upon property rights, they undermines free competition, and it stifles innovation. Forcing banks to blacklist individuals or industries based on political agendas betrays the principles of voluntary exchange and individual liberty foundational to a prosperous and ethical economy.

This state-driven overreach incentivizes monopoly-like conditions for big banks by hampering competition from fintech and crypto startups. The government’s interference not only erodes trust in financial institutions but also perpetuates a system where political elites control the means of exchange, violating the moral imperative for free markets and individual autonomy.

Running Time: 9 mins