After Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, slammed bitcoin as a “fraud”, JPMorgan is now reportedly heading to bitcoin futures, once CME launches the product in early December, 2017, according to CNBC.
A report from Wall Street Journal reads:
“J.P. Morgan is considering whether to provide its clients access to CME’s new bitcoin product through its futures-brokerage unit.”
While Jamie Dimon may be “hating” bitcoin, he is “in love” with blockchain. He says that the technology has huge value behind it, he is just questionable about bitcoin as a product.
Two months ago, in September 2017, it was reported that despite the comment by JP Morgan’s CEO, the bank has been routing customer orders for bitcoin-related instruments.
What the difference was is that while JPMorgan Chase may be trading bitcoin-related products, the bank is not doing it with its own capital, so the trading is not proprietary, but more like brokerage-type of business.
The strange thing was that even though Jamie Dimon said that he will fire all traders who buy and sell bitcoin, the fact that the bank was actively involved in bitcoin-related products and is now considering trading bitcoin futures in the fourth quarter of 2017, seems to undermine the words of the CEO.
As most analysts predict, most bank and government heads are worried about the massive scale of cryptocurrencies and their current market capitalization, going over $200 billion, with bitcoin’s price hitting new all-time highs of $8,300 as of 21st November, 2017.
According to Fortune magazine:
“Along with JPMorgan, more than a dozen banks, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Credit Suisse Group AG, have acted as brokers for buying and selling Bitcoin XBT on Nasdaq’s Stockholm-based exchange, according to Swedish online bank Nordnet AB.”