Jamie Dimon’s Warning Regarding The Future Of Bitcoin
By Kaya Johnson for FintechRanking.com
The times when Bitcoin was only used for bogus transactions and it was all surrounded by a mist of mystery and uncertainty are long gone. The cryptocurrency gathers more and more adepts as days go by, however, not everyone is so thrilled about it.
Jamie Dimon VS Bitcoin
Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan for example, he went out on national TV and said that Bitcoins is a fraud. Present at the Delivering Alpha conference, Jamie said that the cryptocurrency is not a real thing and that it will eventually disappear. He went even further and joked about the fact that his daughter purchased some bitcoin herself in order to make a profit of the trend that has seen it grow with over 300% this year alone.
Bitcoin worse than the tulip bulbs
While being at another conference, the same day, Jamie took the opportunity to attack the cryptocurrency once again. He said that the situation that we are facing now reminds him of the tulip bulb crisis from the 17th century. He also stated that it has to blow up at some point as real currencies have legal support, while bitcoin does not have such a thing.
Continuing his attack, the CEO of JPMorgan said that he will fire anyone in his company that is trading bitcoin for two main reasons: it’s against his regulations and those employees are stupid. Immediately after Dimon publicly criticized Bitcoin, it fell with around 2% – a clear effect of the negative publicity he manages to bring.
It seems that Dimon really picked a good moment to attack the currency as more and more Wall Street figures started to embrace Bitcoin and investing in it. Some rumors say that even with this tough and negative view over Bitcoin, JPMorgan started a project for implementing blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, in order to cut costs.
Has the attack anything to do with the declines in trading revenue?
Although there are no clear links between Dimon’s attack on Bitcoin and the recent announcement he made regarding a drop of 20% compared to previous year in trading revenue, chances are that the two events are somehow connected. He also said that the bank may stop giving intra-quarter guidance in the near future. Also, the stock for JPMorgan also fell recently but even though we are talking about a fall, the decrease is not relevant. JPMorgan is not the only financial institution to predict drops in trading revenue. Earlier this week, John Gerspach, the CEO of Citigroup sent a warning that volumes could register a 15% drop.
All these drops decreases are generated by the fact that 2017 is a very calm year on the market with the CBOE Volatility Index at an historical-low for the past 20 years. This low volatility combined with the growth of cryptocurrency trading and the general tendency for people to accept Bitcoin as a real currency, could pose a serious threat to big traders like JPMorgan.
If the warnings of Jamie Dimon will come true and Bitcoin will eventually go bust or if the people supporting the cryptocurrency will eventually manage to turn it into a real coin, time will tell. One thing is certain though, all the big players will not stand down from the fight.
