JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon on Crypto: “I’d Close It Down”

For more than a decade, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren have clashed over financial regulation. However, during a U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing on Wednesday, they took the same view. Both want the government to crack down on cryptocurrency.

Dimon has “always been deeply opposed to crypto, Bitcoin, etc.,” he said during the hearing in response to Warren’s questions. “The only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers … money laundering, tax avoidance,” he claimed. “If I was the government, I’d close it down.”

Dimon’s remarks come as his institution continues to invest in blockchain technology. JPM Coin, the financial giant’s corporate stablecoin, was released in 2017 and is still available to select institutional clients today.

In addition, the bank unveiled its blockchain platform, Onyx, in 2020, calling it the first bank-led project of its sort. JPM Coin, the company’s own coin, is currently moving more than $1 billion each day.

Dimon was one of numerous bank CEOs, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and BNY Mellon, who agreed that cryptocurrency firms should be subject to the same anti-money-laundering regulations as traditional financial organizations.