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While the inflammatory title merely describes the law, and does not endorse it, further in the article the authors describe Operation Choke Point deceptively, writing: "An Obama administration program, Operation Choke Point, cracked down on bank accounts for some payday lenders and gun-related businesses."

This is a lie by omission - the full list of legal businesses targeted is longer, and includes "things such as ammunition sales, escort services, get-quick-rich schemes, on-line gambling, “racist materials” and payday loans." [1,2]. On the other hand, the government explicitly forbade banks from discriminating against illegal immigrants [3].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point#Details

[3] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-and-j...

No right to banking, but also no requirements that everyone must accept cash in any and all denominations. Suspicious, like this was just intended as a way to control and track people.

In general, debanking for political/moral/ethical views seems like a messy situation, but I guess I wonder with crypto currency firms in particular. Not to get all philosophical, but what is banking? I could imagine some practical considerations of interfacing with some types of big financial institutions, and certainly no one should be forced to lend to high risk folks (though it should be based on an objective metric).

But I guess, they called out cash businesses, is there a risk to the bank, or I guess worried about doing business with drug dealers? I guess cryptocurrency falls into this category, where maybe the bank has to deal with potentially large sums of money it can't trace the origins of?