It has been just reported the fact that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that Bitcoin is a “pet rock” and its main use case is aiding illicit schemes. Check out the latest reports about this below.
JPMorgan CEO addresses Bitcoin
JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, who has been a long-time skeptic of cryptocurrency, has once again criticized Bitcoin, referring to it as a “pet rock”.
In an interview on CNBC Squawk Box from the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, Dimon expressed his belief that Bitcoin has no practical use cases other than for illegal activities.
However, he did acknowledge the potential of blockchain technology.
“Blockchain is real. It’s a technology. We use it. It’s going to move money, it’s going to move data, it’s efficient. We’ve been talking about that for 12 years too and it’s very small. Okay, so I think we’ve wasted too many words on that. Cryptocurrencies, there are two types. There’s a cryptocurrency that might actually do something. Think of a cryptocurrency that has an embedded smart contract in it and then we can use it to buy and sell real estate and move data, that may have value – tokenizing things that you do something with.”
He continued and said the following:
“And then there’s one which does nothing. I call it the pet rock, the Bitcoin or something like that. And so on the Bitcoin, I’m not trying to make a joke here, there are use cases: AML (anti-money laundering) fraud, tax avoidance, sex trafficking. Those are real use cases. And you see it being used for maybe $50 billion to $100 billion a year for that. That is the end use case. Everything else is people trade among themselves.”
During a CNBC segment, it was pointed out that historically, the US dollar has been primarily used for money laundering, not Bitcoin.
In 2022, the crypto research firm Chainalysis discovered that while 5% of the global gross domestic product is laundered every year in fiat currency, only 0.05% of all crypto transactions involve money laundering.
Jamie Dimon, despite his repeated criticism of Bitcoin, has stated that he does not wish to discuss it any further and believes that people should have the right to trade in this digital asset.
“Now my last statement, the last time I ever talk about Bitcoin, is I defend your right to do Bitcoin. I think it’s okay. I don’t want to tell you what to do. So my personal advice is don’t get involved, but I don’t want to tell anybody what to do. It’s a free country.”
He was asked to share his opinion on the recent launch of spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by BlackRock and other large financial entities.