Jamie Dimon is eating crow.
During an interview at the Delivering Alpha Conference in September 2017, Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan—the largest bank in the world—called Bitcoin a “fraud.”
At the time, Bitcoin was getting a lot of attention… The industry bellwether—and world’s largest cryptocurrency based on market cap—started 2017 at around $900 and surged to over $4,000 by September.
But Dimon rejected the hype. “It’s just not a real thing,” he said. “Eventually it will be closed. It’s worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed.”
Dimon even went so far as to say he would fire any employee trading Bitcoin for being “stupid.”
Four months later, Dimon said, “I regret making that [fraud] comment.” One year after that… his bank announced plans to launch its own digital security.
On February 14, JP Morgan announced it would be launching a digital security called JPM Coin. The coin will be used to settle payments and transactions for the bank’s largest customers.
Why did Dimon change his tune?
The quick answer is efficiency and transparency.
You see, JP Morgan counts some of the world’s largest companies as clients. It moves roughly $6 trillion around the world every single day. That’s 27% of our entire national debt.
And the current system for transferring payments and transactions can take days to settle. But with the power of the blockchain, JP Morgan can monitor and verify the assets in real time. And settle transactions instantly.
Through the JPM Coin, businesses will now be able to transfer money in seconds. As soon as the coins appear in the receiver’s account, he or she can exchange those coins for U.S. dollars.
To be fair… JPM Coin isn’t a cryptocurrency.
It won’t run on a public blockchain (meaning it won’t be open to the public). It’s just using blockchain technology to transfer money (through its JPM Coin) across accounts to settle payments and transactions.
But the writing is on the wall: Digital securities are disrupting the fabric of the financial industry.
Umar Farooq, head of digital treasury services and blockchain at JP Morgan said:
The applications [for blockchain] are frankly quite endless; anything where you have a distributed ledger which involves corporations or institutions can use this.
We’ve already seen digital securities infiltrate the art market through the sale of a portion of Andy Warhol’s “14 Small Electric Chairs”… the U.S. stock market through DX Exchange… corporate debt through IBM’s partnership with Securitize… and real estate with the St. Regis Aspen Luxury Hotel now utilizing digital securities.
In my speech at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference this past January, I highlighted how the $6 trillion gold market will one day utilize digital securities.The bottom line: Digital securities aren’t going to disrupt trillion-dollar industries… it’s already happening.
 | Frank X. Curzio Founder and CEO, Curzio Research |
Note: I’ve been vocal in my belief that digital securities represent one of the greatest investing opportunities for individual investors since the creation of the internet.
I believe in the technology so much I created my own digital security to help transform Curzio Research into one of the largest financial newsletter companies in the world. If you’re an accredited investor, the Curzio Equity Owners (CEO) token is your opportunity to profit alongside us as we grow.
