Jamie Dimon, CEO of America's biggest bank JP Morgan Chase, has always been critical about cryptocurrency and “deeply opposed to Bitcoin et cetera”, but he does accept people’s fundamental right to buy Bitcoin:
"I don't know what the Bitcoin itself is for, but I defend your right to smoke a cigarette, I'll defend your right to buy a Bitcoin. I will personally never buy Bitcoin and I do think it’s a risk if you are a buyer. When governments look at all this stuff, why do they put up with it?”
Dimon added that Bitcoin’s rocketing price should actually prompt potential investors to pause as concerns about a financial bubble rise.
Dimon also stated that the risk of a recession in the U.S. remained and recommended that the Federal Reserve wait until after June before it cuts interest rates. Other experts no longer expect the economy to face recession this year, given cooling inflation and a falling unemployment rate.
Just a few months ago, during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Dimon said that the true use case for crypto is “criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, tax avoidance” and that he’d “close it down” if he were the government.
This January, asked about Bitcoin ETF approval, Dimon told CNBC that he defends others’ right to have Bitcoin, but his advice is not to get involved as Bitcoin does nothing and, apart from illegal use cases, is suitable only for people trading among themselves. He also promised not to talk about Bitcoin anymore as we have "wasted too many words" on blockchain over the last 12 years. It is worth mentioning that he has been promising not to do this since at least 2017, when he first called Bitcoin a fraud and was asked about Bitcoin everywhere.
“Number one: I don’t care, so please just stop talking about this s***.”
Over the years Dimon has had many 'choice' words about Bitcoin and its users. He once expressed doubt over Bitcoin being limited, suggesting that when the last coin is minted, “Satoshi is going to come on there, laugh hysterically, go quiet, all Bitcoin is going to be erased.”
Apart from that one, our Top 3 favourites are:
“It’s worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed,” - 2017.
“Crypto is a complete sideshow, OK? I’ve made my views perfectly clear, that crypto tokens are like pet rocks,” - 2022.
“I think all that’s been a waste of time and why you guys waste any breath on it is totally beyond me. Bitcoin itself is a hyped up fraud,” - 2023
However, it should be mentioned that Dimon is not an opponent of all uses of distributed ledger technology. He has admitted that blockchain as a technology might have value, for example, to tokenize things that you can do something with. His bank was the first in America to create and successfully use a digital coin representing a fiat currency, JPM Coin, which is now used to facilitate interbank payments. And last October, JPMorgan enabled clients to use tokenized assets as collateral.
Even though we do not share Dimon's opinion, it is impressive that he has remained so consistent over the years.
