In his testimony before the lawmaker of the United States, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, called himself a major skeptic where cryptocurrencies are concerned.
The CEO said that cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, were nothing more than decentralized Ponzi schemes.
On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee had held an oversight hearing in which Dimon was asked about not being more active in the crypto industry.
Dimon speaks up
According to JPMorgan and Chase’s CEO, he believes that smart contracts, blockchain technology, decentralized finance (DeFi) ledgers and tokens that serve a purpose do have value.
However, he then proceeded to criticize crypto tokens that are actually considered currencies. Dimon was also asked to share his thoughts regarding the draft stablecoin bill in the US.
This is when he shared that he does not believe there is any issue with stablecoins, as long as they are properly regulated.
But, he did add that this regulation needs to be the same as to what money market funds have to deal with.
In the past as well, the chief executive has not been a fan of bitcoin and went as far as describing it as a ‘fraud’.
He had said previously that he does not want to support the crypto space on a personal level. On occasion, he did soften his stance on crypto a bit.
For instance, he had once highlighted that crypto can be used for some specific purposes, such as when making cross-border payments.
JPMorgan
Even though Dimon appears to have such a negative stance where cryptocurrencies are concerned, JPMorgan has been making moves for delving into the blockchain technology space.
In October 2020, the financial powerhouse actually introduced its own stablecoin by the name of JPM Coin and this is the first crypto, which is actually supported by a bank in the United States.
The purpose of introducing the stablecoin was to increase settlement efficiency. Only a week after the bank had introduced the coin, it then launched a new business division named Onyx.
This particular division was dedicated to blockchain technology. Since its launch, a number of large institutional clients have used the Onyx platform for making global payments round-the-clock.
Other investments
Apart from this, JPMorgan also launched its virtual lounge in February in Decentraland, which is a blockchain-based world.
This made it the first major bank to move into the Metaverse. The company also released a report in which it referred to the Metaverse as an opportunity that was worth $1 trillion.
The bank has also been hiring new staff for making more progress in the crypto and blockchain space. The most recent hiring announcement was made on September 9th.
Tahreem Kamptom was hired by Microsoft to serve as JPMorgan’s senior payments executive. He will assist in exploring blockchain technology, as his bio on LinkedIn shows his experience with crypto-related methods.
The hearing also saw US lawmakers question CEOs of other banks about their plans regarding financing crypto mining.
The CEOs of Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup all said that they did not have any intention to do so.