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Last year, J.P. Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon openly dubbed Bitcoin a “fraud”. Though a little bit later he publicly admitted that he regretted about having done it, he explained the public that he had no desire to deepen in this issue.
Nevertheless, just one year has passed and J.P. Morgan announced the launch of its own cryptocurrency dubbed JPM Coin, the world’s first crypto ever created by a banking institution. The main idea behind the coin’s creation is to offer the bank’s wholesale clients a better, safer and quicker option to settle transactions.
With the help of the coin, tokenized fiat can be transferred instantly and confidentially. It means that now network participants do not need to wait for two days for payments to clear which is said to enhance client experience.
Though the bank expected a very positive reaction from the community, it’s worth mentioning that a lot of experts considered this move of the bank rather controversial. For example, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the introduction of a closed network, the bank just missed the point of cryptocurrency.
Consumer Use
Now Jamie Dimon made a new rather surprising statement, saying that their JPM Coin one day could become a means for consumer payments.
Speaking about a range of potential use cases for their digital asset, he said:
“JPMorgan Coin could be internal, could be commercial, it could one day be consumer.”
Given the specificity of the bank’s business, such a statement of its CEO became as shocking for the community as the first one about the launch of its own crypto.
Umar Farooq, who is JPMorgan blockchain lead, explained that in spite of a variety of different purposes of blockchain, the primary aim of their work with this technology is not a today’s popular initiative to launch security tokens but to settle cross-border payments.
Let us also remind, that the bank has taken a decision that their digital asset will act as a stablecoin for their clients and its value needs to be fixed at the level of $1.00.
Though Dimon suggested that the bank may one day provide retail consumers with an opportunity to feel all the benefits of JPM Coin, the financial giant is not planning to do it in the nearest future. At least such information is published on the bank’s official website.
That’s why, at this stage, the coin is likely to be intended only for business-to-business use cases.
However, despite the fact that a lot of members of the crypto community do not treat the coin seriously, some experts strongly believe that one day JPM Coin could fully replace XRP that is now considered to be the key bank-friendly crypto and occupies the third position in the list of top cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
