Crypto is for criminals? JPMorgan has been fined $39B and has its own token
Crypto supporters on X lost no time in pointing out the irony of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s recent remarks about Bitcoin and crypto to the United States Banking Committee. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been chastised on crypto X (Twitter) for suggesting that Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency’s “only true use case” is to support crime. “The only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, and tax avoidance,” Dimon stated on December 5 during a hearing before the United States Banking Committee. “If I were the government, I’d close it down.”
However, crypto pundits swiftly pointed out Dimon’s apparent hypocrisy, pointing out that JPMorgan is the second most penalized bank, having paid $39.3 billion in fines across 272 offenses since 2000, according to Good Jobs First’s violation database. Dimon, who took over as CEO in 2005, was responsible for around $38 billion of these fines. “Talk about being a fucking hypocrite!” exclaimed crypto lawyer John Deaton on X on December 6. “Jamie Dimon is in no position to criticize Bitcoin with this sort of track record,” said VanEck strategic adviser Gabor Gurbacs, noting that banks worldwide have paid $380 billion in fines this century.
In September, the Dimon-led bank agreed to a $75 million settlement with the US Virgin Islands over charges that it allowed and financially benefited from Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise between 2002 and 2005 – settlements, it should be remembered, are not confessions of guilt. In October 2013, the bank paid the highest penalties in its corporate history, $13 billion, for deceiving investors about “toxic” mortgage agreements. Toxic investments are those that have a considerable drop in value, causing the market to collapse. Several JPMorgan traders were also probed for allegedly manipulating several metal futures markets between 2008 and 2016, and they agreed to pay roughly $1 billion to resolve the inquiry in September 2020.
Dimon says he’d shut cryptocurrency down, but JPMorgan has its own token
In a closing speech to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Wallet during the hearing, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon remarked, “If I were the government, I’d close it down,” alluding to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Despite being “deeply opposed” to the digital asset industry, Dimon and JPMorgan recently established its own crypto currency — JPM Coin for its institutional client base on a private version of the Ethereum blockchain. In October, the bank also launched a blockchain-based tokenization platform, with BlackRock as a client. In April 2021, it also contributed to a $65 million fundraising round for Ethereum infrastructure provider Consensys.
However, it is possible that Dimon was distinguishing between cryptocurrencies that have a centralized power behind them and those that do not, as he has previously referred to decentralized currencies as Ponzi schemes. Bankless also criticized Dimon’s remarks, stating that due to Bitcoin’s decentralized nature, the US government cannot put an effective ban on the cryptocurrency sector. Dimon’s comments prompted a Community Notes fact check on X, which revealed that less than 1% of cryptocurrency transactions are fraudulent.
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