Jamie Dimon reiterated his negative stance on bitcoin, saying it serves as “fool’s gold of the future”. He also opined that the entire cryptocurrency industry will inevitably be put under a regulatory framework.
Bitcoin has no “intrinsic value”
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO – Jamie Dimon – is, by all means, a cryptocurrency critic. During a recent interview for HBO, he gave his reasons why he is against the asset class.
He has scratched the hot topic of China’s total ban on bitcoin mining and trading. Dimon believes that this move proved that BTC is illegal. As such, people should not consider it as digital gold:
“I always thought it would become illegal somewhere like China had made it illegal, so I think it’s a bit of crazy gold.”
With this opinion of gold and bitcoin, Dimon stands in opposition to numerous other prominent names that have backed the cryptocurrency because of its similarities to the yellow metal but also due to some of its advantages.
Some of them include Michael Saylor, Steve Wozniak, and Chamath Palihapitiya – who all felt bitcoin to be a better asset than gold because of its well-known maximum cap and digital presence.
JPMorgan’s CEO also urged the US watchdogs to regulate bitcoin as he believes that the main use of the leading digital asset is in illicit activities:
“Yes… If people are using it for tax evasion, sex trafficking and ransomware, it’s going to be regulated whether you like it or not. So it’s not a moral statement. It’s a factual statement.”
Thus, Dimon joined the list of people claiming that bitcoin is mainly used for illegal transactions. Yet, this belief is not precisely accurate as numerous reports have claimed that cash remains the most utilized payment method for bad actors. In addition, the BTC blockchain is transparent because all transactions are recorded there.
JPMorgan Jumped on The Crypto Bandwagon
Despite the hostile stance on crypto coming from its CEO, the multinational investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. recently started providing digital asset services to clients.
At the end of July, Mary Callahan Erdoes – the institution’s director of asset and wealth management – noted that most of the bank’s users viewed bitcoin as an asset class. They have also shown a growing demand for crypto-related opportunities and the bank would work in that direction.
“A lot of our clients say, ‘This is an asset class, and I want to invest,’ and our job is to help them put their money where they want to invest. “
Shortly after, America’s biggest bank enabled its institutional clients to access six cryptocurrency funds. One of them – a new bitcoin fund created by digital asset firm NYDIG – is only available to clients of private banks.
