By Melis on The CapitalAnyone else would have gone to jail…Co-conspirators created millions of fake bank accounts and over half a million fake credit card accounts. More than 5,300 people were complicit.But it wasn’t some shady, payday-lending scheme. It wasn’t even a Nigerian boiler-room operation.Instead, it was a well-coordinated plan to commit massive consumer fraud. And the perpetrator was America’s fourth-largest bank: Wells Fargo.In 2016, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) accused the bank of secretly creating 3 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts for five years.Wells Fargo employees also submitted applications for 565,443 credit card accounts without customers’ knowledge.The CFPB hit the bank with $185 million in fines. And it ordered the bank to refund $5 million to customers.But it was a mere slap on the wrist for a company with a $164 billion market cap.And if you think Wells Fargo learned its lesson, think again…Late last year, the company admitted it had to refund some customers for monthly account service fees. It blamed the error on some type of “confusion.”The bank hasn’t disclosed how much money is on the line. But reports say it may have collected hundreds of millions of dollars in service fees.Big banks aren’t on your side. And they can’t be trusted. In turn, you should take control of your own financial future.One way to do so is with Bitcoin. And records secured by Bitcoin blockchains are tamper-proof. No more frauds. It’s no wonder bankers and the old guard are so scared. In a Bitcoin world, we don’t need their institutions.The creator/creators of Bitcoin designed it to be a truly decentralized network. So it doesn’t rely on one central point of control.This model is secure because data is distributed across a global network of 10,000 computers — making information impossible to tamper with.One upside of distributed networks is they’re immune to government control. For instance, no government has ever been able to shut down the Bitcoin network.Another is, it gives Bitcoin holders control of their assets. As long as you have your private keys, you have custody of your bitcoin. With Melis wallet, for example, you can.Just about any other investment (other than precious metals) relies on trusting a third party. We have to trust banks to hold our cash, brokerage firms to hold our stocks, and local governments to hold our property deed records.The problem is, banks, brokers, and governments have proven they’ll violate our trust. They know there’s nothing we can do about it.This is the opportunity for Bitcoin to change the world.We envision a future where we’ll see new financial institutions built on public blockchains (such as Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash for example) spring up.Their documents will be tamper-proof. They won’t be able to move customer money without approval. And they won’t be able to engage in “off-the-books” transactions that destroyed Lehman, Countrywide, and Wachovia.The Capitalhttps://medium.com/media/3b6b127891c5c8711ad105e61d6cc81f/hrefBitcoin and Financial Freedom was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.