Bitcoin advocates are jumping up and down again after reports that Vietnam has closed 86 million bank accounts that failed to comply with a facial biometric authentication mandate.
Several Vietnamese media outlets — including Vietnam+ — reported in July that over 86 million bank accounts started being closed on Sept. 1, while the remaining 113 million bank accounts were verified under new biometric laws that aim to prevent fraud and money laundering.
A Reddit user known as “Yukzor,” a former foreign contractor in Vietnam, said the new law’s implementation has required him to fly back into the country to prevent his HSBC bank account from closing, with no remote solution.
“Does that sound crazy to anyone else in 2025, you cannot transfer your money and have to fly into a country in person to resolve an issue? On top of it all, they said they will close my account this month if i don’t fly in and update the biometrics,” he wrote eariler this month.
“This is why we Bitcoin”
Bitcoin advocates have long supported the idea that people should have access to their own funds, free of government or external interference.
“If users don’t comply by the 30th [of September] they’ll lose their money. This is why we Bitcoin,” Bitcoin industry commentator Marty Bent said on Thursday. Cointelegraph couldn’t verify whether customer funds would be unrecoverable after Sept. 30.
However, punitive capital controls of this nature have taken place in Lebanon, Turkey, Venezuela, Cyprus, Nigeria, India and many other countries since Bitcoin launched, and it would be “naive to think that Vietnam will be the last,” Bent said in a separate article for the TFTC on Thursday.
The strict measure — which Bitcoin environmentalist Daniel Batten said would give Vietnam’s central bank “next-gen financial surveillance ability” — shows why permissionless monetary protocols like Bitcoin are necessary to safeguard against state overreach.
“Once you use Bitcoin as your bank, and do it correctly, there is no need to worry about your country’s government or central bank deciding on a whim to thrust biometric verification requirements on you,” Bent said.
“That’s a powerful ability that most of the world hasn’t awoken to yet.”
Banking biometrics said to fight fraud
Vietnam introduced the measures after seeing a rise in generative AI and sophisticated spoofing techniques to bypass security measures like liveness detection in recent years.
In May, local police busted an AI-powered money laundering ring that used fake facial scans and laundered an estimated 1 trillion Vietnamese dong ($39 million).
To comply, bank customers need to complete a first-time facial biometric authentication, and again for online transfers over 10 million Vietnamese dong ($379), the State Bank of Vietnam said in late June.
Related: Blockchain security must localize to stop Asia’s crypto crime wave
Combined transactions that surpass 20 million Vietnamese dong ($758) would also need biometric authentication.
However, a crypto executive based in Vietnam told Cointelegraph the news may be overblown and that most locals haven’t been affected, stating that the changes have mainly impacted foreign residents with inactive accounts.
“It doesn’t seem to be a local outcry by any means,” they said.
AICEAN chief marketing officer Herbert Sim, who is currently in Vietnam, told Cointelegraph that the problem especially affects foreigners who have left the country or for casual or inactive accounts, or accounts people have forgotten about.
“The [One-Time Password] and phone‐bindings, needing in-person biometric verification, are big hurdles,” said Sim, also known as the “Bitcoin Man.”
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