Thread by @rohanagarwal94

It was an average day at my hardware wallet startup in India.

I got an SMS from our banking partner ICICI - "Dear customer, RS XXXXXXX has been debited from your account"
Confused, I checked our bank balance. It was zero. From 7 digits to 0

How did this happen?
Time for 🧵

We are banking with @ICICIBank since we got funded by @TachyonAccel . We've got grants from govt. incubators & orgs like @SINEIITB, @GoI_MeitY & @icreateNextGen.
Yet ICICI debited all our money & closed our bank account for being associated with Crypto. Without any notice 😤

I called the folks at ICICI. No one had any information. I had to personally visit the bank.

The manager told our bank a/c is closed on instructions of bank HQ 🤯

Turns out, their risk mgmt team has flagged Cypherock as a suspicious company doing crypto transactions.

And banned us from ever having a bank a/c with ICICI in future.
But ever since we started Cypherock, we never did any crypto transactions from our current account.

So then why did ICICI banned us?

I kept following up for 2 weeks to find out why would one of the most reputed banks lock a client from using its own funds for 5 weeks?
We couldn't pay the salaries, our supplies were stuck, no one could pay us. It was a mess.
And reasons ICICI gave us were the most bizarre ones

Reason 1
They in its research found out that our investor @Consensys deals with Crypto and we were guilty by association. Even though RBI itself approved this equity investment in 2019.
What do you do when the boss wants impact but the junior guy just won't let you work?

Reason 2
We were covered by a Crypto media company @Coindesk. And some random dude at ICICI HQ thought this justifies banning a serious startup from conducting its business.
This article mentions some banks too. Does that mean they'll be cancelled too?
coindesk.com/indias-banks-a…

@vipulsaini594 and I started @Cypherockwallet to bring peace of mind in Crypto self custody.
We believe in Crypto but we haven't broken any laws of the land.

What ICICI did was completely uncalled for and shows ignorance & risk-averse at the root level.

The world will belong to Crypto. It's the next big technological shift that can help India to level up with the richest and most developed countries of the world.
Indians like @MetaKovan, @Balajis, @_jdkanani have proven that this is possible.

What #IndiansinCrypto need is an open conducive environment to experiment & not waste time in dealing with such stupid arrogance.
As @Balajis made the case for why India should buy Crypto, adopting it in our financial strategy will help us leapfrog the queue of developing nations

For India,
Being late to the Internet was a curse
But being late to Crypto will be a regret

--END

Kudos to folks like @NischalShetty @cryptokanoon @coincrunchin @ThatNaimish @smtgpt @sunny_bitcoin and many others who I missed for doing their part to educate India around Crypto. #IndiaWantsCrypto