JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has long been critical of cryptocurrencies. In 2021, he didn’t leave much up to the imagination when he said that “I [he] personally think[s] that Bitcoin is worthless.”
But in 2022, he’s singing a slightly different tune.
In a recent letter to shareholders, Dimon praised blockchain technology, saying that it will have a positive impact on our financial system.
“Decentralized finance and blockchain are real, new technologies that can be deployed in both public and private fashion, permissioned or not.”
At face, this might be extremely surprising. However, people with eyes on headlines would know well that Dimon’s flip-flop on crypto has been a long-time coming – JPMorgan has been developing its own cryptocurrency, JPM Coin, a dollar-backed stablecoin, since February 2019.
The company also developed a blockchain platform called Liink, which enables seamless data exchange between more than 400 institutions.
“We use a blockchain network called Liink to enable banks to share complex information, and we also use a blockchain to move tokenized US dollar deposits with JPM Coin,” he wrote.
“We believe there are many uses where a blockchain can replace or improve contracts, data ownership and other enhancements; for some purposes, however, it is currently too expensive or too slow to be deployed.” he added.
Both efforts are substantial tests of confidence in crypto and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) by one of its most dramatic critics – a monolithic investment bank. However, crypto maxis have their reservations about how authentic Dimon’s hate for Bitcoin really was.
To his credit, Dimon speaks plainly about what neobanks and crypto are doing to traditional finance in his letter. He said that “the role of banks in the global financial system is diminishing” and that he believes that there are “many uses where a blockchain can replace or improve contracts, data ownership, and other enhancements.”
Maybe the crypto maxis can declare another small victory in Dimon’s praise. It has a lot of overlap with billionaire investor Ray Dalio, who found himself pivot away from explicitly anti-crypto rhetoric to optimistically-skeptical crypto convert last year amid the U.S’s latest inflation episode.
However, one thing can be gleaned from Dimon’s evolution on crypto: he was firm in his ways, until he wasn’t. And JPMorgan didn’t cement its opinion – it stayed open to the emergent tech, and the money, and played the field.