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Court orders Banco de Chile, BancoEstado to reopen cryptocurrency firm accounts

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Court orders Banco de Chile, BancoEstado to reopen cryptocurrency firm accounts

Chile's TDLC competition tribunal has ordered Banco de Chile and Banco del Estado de Chile to reopen the bank accounts of cryptocurrency trader Orionx, Diario Financiero reported.

The order follows Orionx filing a lawsuit against six leading Chilean banks for allegedly abusing their dominant position by excluding the company from the digital payment market.

According to the report, Banco de Chile previously denied having any cryptocurrency operators among its clients, but the legal proceedings showed that it closed such accounts early in 2018 after deciding that it would not do business with cryptocurrency traders until their activities were regulated.

In addition to Banco de Chile and BancoEstado, the Orionx lawsuit also named Banco BICE, Itaú CorpBanca, Banco Santander Chile and Scotiabank Chile.

Other Chilean cryptocurrency traders have filed similar lawsuits in recent months. In April, the TDLC ordered Scotiabank and BancoEstado to reopen the bank accounts of trading platform CryptoMKT, while lenders were also ordered to do the same for the shuttered accounts of Buda.

Both Buda and CryptoMKT filed lawsuits against a number of banks for closing their accounts, and have also asked financial industry association ABIF to clarify its position on cryptocurrency traders.

Chile's finance ministry, meanwhile, is studying the regulation of cryptocurrencies amid the dispute between traders and banks.