It’s no secret that some major banks aren’t really all that enamored with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Last month there were reports that US banks like Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank were shutting down the bank accounts, or refusing new applications, from businesses involved with the digital currency. But while these are arguably justified in their course of action, the actions of Dutch bank Rabobank take prejudice against Bitcoin to a whole new level.

Rabobank’s actions were the focus of a recent article in Coindesk, which states that the bank cancelled 99 percent of its customers’ transactions with bitcoin exchanges over a two-day period last month. Apparently, this isn’t the first time that the bank has made life difficult for those trading in BTC – it’s been accused of blocking money transfers to Bitcoin exchanges in the past, albeit previously just for individuals, not businesses. But last month’s actions were a sharp escalation of Rabobank’s ‘Bitcoin bias’, something that leaked internal documents put down to the ‘high-risk’ nature of BTC-related transactions, which the bank sees as “potential fraud”.

Blocking Bitcoin transactions due to the risk of fraud suggests that Rabobank sees the cryptocurrency as something to be scared of, a threat to its businesses. That’s understandable enough, as Coindesk notes:

“This is money that people may normally leave in their savings accounts. When a customer decides to use it to purchase bitcoin the bank has less money on its books, meaning that they can’t lend out as much as before. If just a few people would do this, it would not be a big issue. But when the general public starts to adopt bitcoin it could endanger part of the bank’s business.”

When you think about it like this, it makes sense that Rabobank might want to throw a few obstacles in Bitcoin’s path, but this kind of bullying tactic could ultimately prove to be shortsighted. Instead of deterring people from buying BTC, in the long term such measures are only likely to infuriate those who’re curious about the cryptocurrency and push them to embrace it all the more.

Sadly, it’s not only Rabobank that’s doing this. Coindesk notes that numerous banks all over the world are employing similar tactics:

“Banks in several other countries have also engaged in some level of anti-bitcoin activity, such as Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank and Royal Bank of Canada, Barclays in the UK and Sweden’s Swedbank.”

One could be forgiven for thinking that in the face of such opposition from the world’s financial powerhouses, Bitcoin’s future isn’t going to be a rosey one. But it can also be taken a sign that Bitcoin is indeed on the right path – it’s growing in both popularity and value by the day as growing numbers of people decide to bank on Bitcoin rather than keep faith with their low-interest saving’s accounts.

Bitcoin has the banks running scared, because it poses a real threat to the archaic financial system they’ve come to dominate. But this fear can only mean one thing – the banks themselves believe that Bitcoin means business, and it’s only going to become more popular, more valuable, and ultimately much more of a threat to them, in the months and years to come.