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Australian bank tells customers to withdraw funds immediately before it closes this week

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An Australian digital bank has collapsed and advised 6,000 customers to withdraw their money before it stops doing business this week.

“Customers need to transfer the balances held in all Volt accounts to a nominated bank account with another financial institution before the 5th of July 2022, Tuesday,” Volt Bank’s website said.

The neobank’s eight board members, including former HSBC Australia Chief Graham Bradley, voted to close the virtual doors because it had failed to raise enough funds to support its plans to write mortgages. Volt will leave its 140 North Sydney headquarters employees without a job.

Neobanks or challenger banks are financial technology (fintech) firms that offer apps, software and other technologies to streamline mobile and online banking. In January 2019, Volt became the first local stand-alone digital bank to secure a full banking license from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

“All interest has been accrued to your account up to the 29th of June 2022 when the interest rate was changed to zero. This interest will be paid to your Volt account on the 29th of June 2022 except for the Save and Spend accounts which will be paid on the 1st of July 2022,” the bank said in a statement.

Vol Bank founder and CEO Steve Weston told Banking Day that he feels gutted for the team and customers who have supported the business.

“We’ve built something as a team that Australia really needs to bring banking competition to the market. We’ve got technology and capability that simply doesn’t exist in Australia today,” he said.

He added that the company was able to crunch the mortgage approval process to a matter of hours and minutes. He pointed out that to commercialize that platform, “it is needed to have a lot more capital that they weren’t able to get.”

Volt tried to raise $200 million in investor funding through a “Series F” round launched in February. But due to the current stalling of worldwide economies, investors began backing out due to uncertain financial markets.

The bank reportedly has more than $100 million in deposits. To ease the transition of money to a different bank account quickly, it increased the daily transfer limits to $250,000.

Financial safety regulator Australian Prudential Regulation Authority assured the public that it will closely monitor the process so that funds are returned to the bank’s customers in an orderly and timely manner.

Melbourne-based fintech Maslow founder Kane Jackson is concerned about the fallout for fintechs, given the quality of the bank’s management and staff.

“It costs a bank a lot to implement a strategic pivot and deviating from your original strategy means losing that first action strength. In the current environment, investors seem to be saying there’s no room to test an alternative strategy,” Jackson said. (Related: The next Great Depression begins: Bank run in China being ignored by Western media could be precursor to massive economic collapse.)

Australian firms collapsing post-pandemic

The neobank currently joined a long list of companies that slumped due to the current global crises. The Australian government used to provide stimulus packages and low-interest rates, but these are no longer available.

Another challenger firm, Xinja, closed down in December 2020, citing the pandemic as the reason why it is not able to attract new investors.

A start-up called Send, which delivers groceries in under 10 minutes across Melbourne and Sydney, went into liquidation at the end of June, leaving 300 jobs at risk. An administrator’s report found the company had spent a glaring $11 million in just eight months.

Australian construction companies have also stopped operation this year, including Gold Coast-based Condev and Probuild.

Last week, Fin Tech Boomer reported that Melbourne-based Snowdon Developments is on the brink of collapse. Sources revealed that the employees have not been adequately paid since October and half of them resigned already. Creditors, who have been chasing the company for $2.5 million, are demanding the Supreme Court of Victoria to force the company to go into liquidation “on the grounds of insolvency.”

Visit Collapse.news for more news related to the collapse of businesses worldwide.

Watch the below video that talks about the banking collapse.

(Article by Belle Carter republished from Citizens.news)

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“Cursed charity shop painting ruined my life”, says British woman

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A British woman purchased a portrait of a young girl from a charity shop and now asserts that the picture is cursed, reports mirror.co.uk.

Zoe
Elliot-Brown, aged 36, spotted an artwork by an unfamiliar artist at
the Hastings Advice Representation Center in St Leonards-on-Sea, East
Sussex, a month ago.

Simultaneously, the seller cautioned Zoe
about the painting possibly being cursed, revealing that a prior
purchaser of the same artwork had returned it to the store with the
statement “it ruined my life.”

Out of curiosity, Zoe captured an
image of the painting on her smartphone and shared the photo with her
68-year-old mother, Jane Elliot-Brown. Her mother seemed to be entranced
by the painting.

Instantly,
she began urging Zoe to acquire the painting. Yielding to her mother’s
persuasion, Zoe paid £20 for the artwork. However, as soon as she
introduced it into her home, strange occurrences commenced taking place.

As
Zoe entered her home and positioned the painting in the living room,
their dog named Cilla leaped up and started growling at the artwork.
Cilla deliberately kept her distance, refraining from approaching the
picture. Subsequently, Zoe’s mother’s health took a sharp decline. She
began experiencing alternating spells of fever and chills, requiring her
to wear four sweaters to keep warm.

Concurrently, Zoe’s mother
seemed to be captivated by the painting. She continuously gazed at it
and even caressed the painted girl’s cheek. During the night, she heard
peculiar knocks emanating from the room where the picture hung, despite
the room being unoccupied.

Zoe managed to persuade her mother that
the painting held negative energy and was cursed. However, Jane
staunchly defended the painting, reluctant to part with it.

“I’ve
never seen my mother yearn for something so intensely. She was
entranced by it, but not in a positive manner. She guarded it. She
frequently gazed at it. She ran her fingers over the painted girl’s
cheeks and polished the surface, although the painting didn’t require
polishing.”

“Each time I mentioned disposing of the painting, she
became exceedingly irritable. It transformed into a sort of family
heirloom for her, something she began cherishing.”

“My mother
flatly refused to get rid of the painting. I think it’s a bit like the
magic power of the Lord of the Rings ring. It definitely works in an
attractive and charming way, it seems to pull you towards it.

“My mother became a bit like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings,” says Zoe.

Jane
herself says that it seems to her that the painted girl is very unhappy
and she stroked her to comfort her. She also does not attribute the
deterioration of her health to the purchase of the painting.

At
the same time, she admits that there were several cases when someone
seemed to knock on the door, and when she opened it, there was no one on
the threshold.

One day, Jane became so ill that she fainted right
in the bathroom. Zoe called 911, but her mother refused to go to the
hospital and was eventually left at home.

One morning, Zoe entered
the living room and saw her mother standing and stroking the painted
girl on her cheeks. And the mother could not remember how she ended up
in the living room and what she did at night.

“It
was strange behavior, especially for my mom. She couldn’t remember
anything from what happened last night. My mom is still very weird and
distracted and doesn’t want to discuss it.”

And then something
even more frightening happened. Zoe and her friend Ben went for a walk
on a hill during a thunderstorm and suddenly saw a “creepy black figure”
that suddenly appeared in front of them.

They do not know if this
is related to the painting, but they immediately ran back in fear.
Deciding to get rid of the cursed painting, Zoey eventually took it and
took it to the same shop where she bought it.

And when she drove
up to the store, she saw that in one of the tires of the car, brand new,
someone stuck a screw. She gave the painting to the seller, but then
changed her mind and took it back.

She
didn’t want someone else to buy the painting and get hurt because of
it. Now Zoe wants to give the picture only to someone who understands
damn things.

Now the painting is kept in Zoya’s house in a box filled with sage (it is believed that sage helps against evil spirits).

She also hung sage in every corner of the house, although Zoya’s mother was very unhappy with this.

“I
thought knowing my luck some idiot will go and get it and try and burn
it and I don’t really want to be left with the remainder of whatever the
hell has been going on. Technically I was the last owner. [I want it]
dealt with properly. […]”

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Wild man with a spear in his hand was spotted in the forests of Germany

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A mysterious wild man, nicknamed by the locals “the wolf man”, was
photographed in the forested mountains of the Harz, in the center of
Germany. The man was completely naked and held a spear in his hand.

The
savage was accidentally noticed by two tourists who were walking
through the forest, not far from the city of Blankenburg in
Saxony-Anhalt, and examined the ruins of an old castle.

“When we
reached the caves in the sands, we saw this wolf-man. He stood high in
one of the caves and held in his hand a long wooden stick that looked
like a spear.

“He didn’t take his eyes off us, but he didn’t say
anything. He looked dirty and looked like a prehistoric man from the
Stone Age, like pictures in a history book,” Gina Weiss, 31, told Bild
newspaper.

According
to Weiss and her friend Toby, they observed this man for about ten
minutes. The naked man appeared to be in his forties and reportedly
these tourists were not the first to have seen him in the area.

It is assumed that he has been living in the forests near Blankenburg for about five years.

Authorities say they have received numerous reports of a person wearing a wolf’s skin or wolf costume over the past five years.

In
March 2023, a frightened eyewitness even called the police because he
thought that a wolfman running next to him wanted to attack him. In
other cases, people have seen how a savage is trying to make a fire or
building a hut out of branches for himself.

At the same time, it
is quite cold in this area in winter and it is not clear how this person
managed to survive here for several years.

According to Alexander
Beck, head of the local fire brigade, this savage clearly has the
skills to live in the wild and adapt to the changing seasons of the
year.

Where this man came from is unknown. There are many theories, from the hermit to more mystical versions such as time portals.

However, there are those who believe that all this is just some kind of prank to scare tourists or some other purpose.

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