Last week we had a three day holiday which started from Wednesday so things should have been back to normal on Monday, of course people who were on vacation found it cut short because of the menace that was Tropical Storm Julia. But what I am going to talk about is the mishap that happened to one of the most stable banks in the country.
On Monday my friend sent me some money so I could make a payment for a loan he has in another bank. I have a checking account in Banco Atlantida which I have had since the company I worked for had my wages deposited there. Of course I went to an ATM and was told there was no system. I went to the mall to try and withdraw it in the bank and that was when I knew we had a problem. The line there was I guess about 500 people.
So I went home and tried to see if I could access my account online, no dice. So I tried accessing it every 15 minutes until I was finally able to get in. So I ran to an ATM a couple of blocks from home and after about ten minutes I was able to withdraw the cash and pay what my friend wanted paid. Later I would find out I had just been lucky,
The lines at the bank were the same on Tuesday, on Wednesday and on Thursday, ATM's did not work, transactions online were not possible. The bank put out a letter saying they had upgraded their software to something named SAP and that was the cause of the problem. Thing is the upgrade was finished on the ninth the letter was published on the 13th. Today a friend was able to withdraw money at the bank, but I think you can do this without the system. This has caused havoc in the country, this bank probably has millions of customers.
I took a taxi to the dentist and the driver, as most taxi driver had a strange version. He says the bank has a couple of hundred million dollars which are from money laundering operations and is being investigated. Of course I do not know where he got this from, or maybe he made it up. But this is considered the best and biggest bank in Honduras, also the second oldest, established in 1913. This system problem is a serious setback for them, any confidence in them has been destroyed.
I am just writing this so you will know that banks, even nowadays can just as easily cease to exist as they did in the days of the old US west. This makes Crypto an even more necessary alternative. No, Crypto is not 100% safe, but if I have a wallet and no one has access to my keys, my money is as safe as it can get. Me, I don't have money in any bank, mainly because I don't have money not because I am smart.