Though JPMorgan Chase will reportedly offer a bitcoin fund for wealthy clients, chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon still isn’t personally sold on the cryptocurrency.
“I’m not a bitcoin supporter,” Dimon said during The Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit on Tuesday. “I don’t care about bitcoin. I have no interest in it.”
“On the other hand, clients are interested, and I don’t tell clients what to do,” he said.
“Blockchain is real. We use it,” according to Dimon. “But people have to remember that a currency is supported by the taxing authority of a country, the rule of law, a central bank.”
It’s not the first time Dimon has been bearish on bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value.
In September 2017, Dimon called bitcoin “a fraud” at the Delivering Alpha conference presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor. “It’s just not a real thing, eventually it will be closed. It won’t end well.”
But a few months later in January 2018, Dimon he had “regret” about making the comment. “I’m not interested that much in the subject at all,” Dimon told Fox Business.
Personal opinions aside, JPMorgan announced in February 2019 that it would roll out a digital currency called JPM Coin, and in October 2020, the firm created a new unit for blockchain projects.
Bitcoin is trading at around $53,835.92 as of 12:56 p.m. EST, according to CoinDesk, with a market value of over $1 trillion.
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