Jamie Dimon is Crypto’s Keyser Soze

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“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” - The Usual Suspects

During the Dec. 6 hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, Jamie Dimon said “I’ve always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc.” He continued with “the only true case for it is criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, tax avoidance.”

Then he ended with, “If I was the government, I’d close it down.”

Harsh words indeed and from the CEO of one of the world’s preeminent banks. People might actually think that Jamie and JPM by extension are against crypto.

Putting aside the technical impossibility of closing down code that lives on global servers, the real funny part is that JPM is one of the most crypto-forward banks in these streets. Here is a list of some of its initiatives:

  • JPM has its own stablecoin, JPM Coin which it uses to support advance payment and settlement on cross border transactions which processes $1B+/ day 24/7.
  • The bank participated with other financial nobodies such as Apollo, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Wisdom Tree in a crypto portfolio management proof of concept called Project Guardian (p.s. one of the technology providers for the project was Axelar which acted as a bridge between bespoke L1s, and which CoinList helped launch. You’re welcome Jamie!). The report states that the expected revenue of tokenization of private funds to have a market value of $400 billion per year for fund managers and distributors (see p. 15).  It also cites operational benefits such as instant rebalancing for thousands of portfolios.
  • That report itself references other relevant crypto projects such as Broadridge’s Distribute Ledger Repo project that is now trading $1T (yes, trillion) repo volume per month.
  • The bank contributed to white papers on 1) DeFi discussing how to make projects AML/KYC compliant, 2) repo settlement, 3) intraday financing, 4) payment network interoperability, and 5) deposit token and central bank digital currencies.
  • JPM executives have been featured on townhalls and podcasts.

I could go on but the disconnect between what Jamie said and what JPM does is quite wide indeed. If digital assets are for criminals, then Jamie is their Keyser Soze (well… minus the whole kill his own family, crime syndicate thing).  

I don’t like the image of Jamie having no idea what is going on in the bank, I much prefer the idea of Jamie the secret HODLer, leaving the Senate hearing lighting a cigarette, checking his phone and approving another internal crypto project while the Senate committee slowly realizes he has been gaslighting them the entire session.  

The greatest trick Jamie ever pulled off is convincing everyone else that he isn't into crypto while pouring resources into being a leading crypto shop.

At CoinList we are not so coy. We are upfront about what we do. We support innovative teams in crypto to succeed in their endeavors. CoinList has always been the best place for ambitious builders in crypto to grow their communities of high quality early adopters, be it via community sales, incentivized testnets, our new family of staking funds, or other diverse offerings.  

More Kobayashi than Keyser. IYKYK.

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