In Wednesday’s congressional hearing on accountability in the US’s largest financial institutions, JPMorgan’s Chase’s chief executive officer Jamie Dimon made his thoughts on cryptocurrencies clear as day.
“I’m a major skeptic of crypto tokens, which you call currency, like Bitcoin,” Dimon told the Democrat-led House Financial Services Committee.
He went on to dismiss crypto assets as “decentralised Ponzi schemes”, though in a conciliatory gesture, Dimon did concede that collateralisd stablecoins pegged to the US dollar wouldn’t be problematic with the proper regulation.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) since 2005 – Source: Alamy
But as for all others, “the notion that it’s good for anybody is unbelievable,” reckoned Dimon, who cited the proliferation of money laundering and even sex trafficking enabled by cryptocurrencies.
Jury out on crypto-enabled trafficking
While there have been numerous studies into the usage of cryptocurrency in the child exploitation black market, the results have not been conclusive.
A 2017 report written by the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children stated:
“In a surprising turn, at least to the authors, there is actually some evidence that use of cryptocurrencies is quite limited for a variety of both economic and security-related reasons.
"Even Bitcoin, vastly more adopted than all its alternatives combined, is, in fact, both far too illiquid and (as criminals are learning, and the press and police should continue to publicise) not nearly as anonymous or as infallible as its proponents would have us believe.”
More recently, a 2021 addendum to the report stated: “Perpetrators who use Bitcoin to buy or sell child sexual exploitation material are on borrowed time, these case studies demonstrate law enforcement can and will find you and prosecute you.”
Dimon’s comments come as no surprise though, given his outspoken stance against digital currencies over the years.
He wrote Bitcoin off as “fraud” in 2017, before partially retracting those comments soon after.
Despite Dimon’s strong opinion, JPMorgan has adopted the technology by launching an internal blockchain and its own ‘JPM Coin’ for finalising cross-border transactions.
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