Noted bitcoin critic and JP Morgan chief executive Jamie DImon has called bitcoin “a fraud” and added that he would fire any employee trading the cryptocurrency.
Banker Dimon was speaking at a banking conference in New York when he made remarks about the world’s most prominent decentralized cryptocurrency. “It’s just not a real thing, eventually it will be closed,” Dimon reportedly stated according to CNBC.
The banking executive also claimed he would fire any JP Morgan trader engaging in bitcoin activity. “I’d fire them in a second,” he said, in quotes reported by Bloomberg. “For two reasons, It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.”
Dimon’s dismissive take on bitcoin took a dramatic turn when he added:
It’s worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed.
As reported by CCN in late 2015, Dimon called bitcoin “a waste of time” at a time when bitcoin was trading under $400, a tenth of the cryptocurrency’s value today. The following month at the WEF summit in Davos, Dimon doubled down on his opinion, stating “there’s nothing behind a bitcoin and I think if it was big, the governments would stop it.”
Making another appearance at an investor conference yesterday, Dimon was asked why he thought bitcoin was “a fraud”. His reason remains the same over the years, as Dimon explained:
Governments, first thing they do is form a currency. They like to control the currency. They control it through a central bank. They also like to know who has it, where it is, where it’s going.
Dimon then opined that bitcoin has a purpose – to be used in impoverished economies or draconian states. Or, if you were a drug dealer or a murderer.
If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than U.S. dollars. So there may be a market for that, but it’d be a limited market.
Dimon’s hubris did allow him to admit that his daughter was a bitcoiner. “My daughter bought bitcoin, it went up and now she thinks she’s a genius.”