Recently, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that he is very skeptical in terms of how he feels about cryptocurrency. This past week, Dimon called crypto tokens like Bitcoin "Ponzi schemes" in response to a question about what specifically prevents him from being more involved in digital market.
When asked to further elaborate on his views toward cryptocurrency in testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Dimon said that he understands the significance and importance of it - in particular, decentralized finance ledgers, smart contracts, and tokens. But he still admitted that he takes issue with crypto tokens that are considered to be currencies.
"I'm a major skeptic on crypto tokens, which you call currency, like Bitcoin," said Dimon. "They are decentralized Ponzi schemes."
In Dimon's testimony, he said that billions of dollars had been lost each year in the name of cryptocurrency, whether it was from money laundering, ransomware, sex trafficking, or theft.
According to Dimon, stablecoins would not be much of an issue with the right amount of management and control. At one point in 2017, Dimon referred to bitcoin as "a fraud," but then later admitted that he felt guilty about making this statement. Additionally, in October 2021, even when the value of cryptocurrency was drastically increasing, Dimon confessed that he thought cryptocurrency was essentially "worthless."
In spite of the fact that Dimon has a generally negative view of cryptocurrency, JPMorgan has been actively supporting blockchain technologies. In October 2020, JPMorgan came out with its own stablecoin referred to as the "JPM Coin," which was also the first cryptocurrency to be supported by an American bank. About a week after JPMorgan launched this stablecoin, the company came out with a business division devoted to blockchain technologies, known as "Onyx."
JPMorgan was additionally the first bank to open within the Metaverse, and ever since, it has been hiring new staff specifically for the blockchain and cryptocurrency world, such as past Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) executive Tahreem Kampton. It hopes to push even further into the cryptocurrency space as time progresses, in spite of Dimon's past expressed concerns.