it’s the world’s largest bank by market cap and
run by one of crypto’s most tireless haters but while Jamie Diamond trash talks Bitcoin in
the streets Bitcoin itself is a is a hyped up fraud it’s a pet rock you’re back to that
really of course yeah jp Morgan is offering clients crypto in the sheets so what’s up with
that and is it bullish bearish or no big deal today we investigate the parasitic relationship
between America’s biggest mega bank and crypto my name is Nick and you’re watching the Coin
Bureau in crypto’s new era of institutional adoption ETFs and presidential meme coins you
have to hand it to JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond for not folding like so many of his Wall Street
colleagues have even as his bank has embraced crypto product offerings Diamond has remained a
perma bear and that takes real conviction diamond hands if you will as one of crypto’s most prolific
haters Diamond’s greatest hits stretch back to at least September 2017 back then an unprecedented
wave of retail FOMO had driven BTC up to almost $5,000 and Diamond was disgusted at an investor
conference that month he famously called Bitcoin quote a fraud and declared it quote worse than
tulip bulbs which let’s be honest is kind of funny he wasn’t joking around though as he also
threatened to fire any JP Morgan trader dealing in Bitcoin quote in a second not only because it was
against company rules but because quote “They’re stupid.” Of course that was about $100,000 ago
now so we suspect any JP Morgan traders caught long in Bitcoin in 2017 won’t have too many
regrets at the time Bitcoin was still years away from attaining macro asset status let alone
being embraced by many of Diamond’s colleagues on Wall Street for Drafire institutions it was
more of an oddity rather than an opportunity but since JP Morgan is the world’s largest bank
by market cap it’s probably safe to call Diamond a key opinion leader his coming out so strongly
against Bitcoin in 2017 will have helped set the tone for serious traditions bitcoin was
illegitimate professionally untouchable and intellectually bankrupt however even as he was
condemning Bitcoin Diamond was already drawing a distinction that would become the central
tenant of JP Morgan’s public facing strategy just a month after his fraud comment he clarified
his position quote I could care less about Bitcoin he said but immediately added quote Blockchain
is a technology which is a good technology we actually use it god bless the blockchain charming
without Bitcoin there would be no blockchain but uh never mind i suppose Diamond’s praise of
blockchain seems a bit disingenuous since he was openly cast in doubt on the maximum supply of
Bitcoin as recently as January 2024 at the World Economic Forum in Davos that month Diamond said
quote “How the hell do you know it’s going to stop at 21 bitcoin is the largest and most secure
blockchain in the world.” And to suggest the maximum supply of BTC could simply be raised one
day suggests either a very poor understanding of blockchain or worse a cynical instinct to spread
FUD with no regard for whether it has any factual basis or not at any rate Diamond has worked hard
to pave the way for old guard institutions like JP Morgan to position themselves as pro- innovation
by co-opting blockchain while in fact opposing its resound and denigrating its permissionless
public manifestation in Bitcoin this God bless the blockchain pivot was the land grab that
gave us Tradfi’s world of distributed ledger technology and digital assets scrubbed clean of
any trace of the C-word it conveniently allowed JP Morgan to avoid being accused of hypocrisy
when it launched its first blockchain product the Interbank Information Network known now as Kexus
Link that same month as the crypto market matured and endured cycle after cycle Diamond adopted
new analogies but remained dismissive at the World Economic Forum in Davos and in US Senate
hearings he repeatedly called Bitcoin quote a pet rock because in his view it quote does nothing
except for appreciating from zero to over $100,000 per unit outperforming every other major asset
class over the last 15 years we might add but uh who’s counting diamond’s rock quip is like a
mean version of Warren Buffett’s criticism of gold which he has always maintained is quote neither
of much use nor procreative gold significantly outperformed the S&P 500 and Berkshire Hathaway
over the last 25 years but it has of course failed to outperform BTC since 2009 when the first coin
was mined i guess that means we’re on the same page with Mr buffett gold is totally useless now
and by the way guys if you’re planning on buying the pet rock thing is Diamond when he’s feeling
generous because as Bitcoin went from strength to strength he only intensified his association of
crypto with criminality he told a congressional hearing in September 2022 that quote crypto tokens
which you call currency like Bitcoin they are decentralized Ponzi schemes and the notion that
it’s good for anybody is unbelievable he went on to link crypto to ransomware money laundering
human trafficking and theft and emphasized that it is quote dangerous and this was a significant
escalation for Diamond who had previously said that he regretted describing Bitcoin as a fraud
dismissing crypto as being somehow fraudulent a pet rock and for stupid people is one thing but
telling the US Congress that it is dangerous and utterly criminal is quite another and this was
a clear attempt to influence government policy to take a hardline stance against crypto and
as if Diamond hadn’t made his recommendation clear enough he returned to Washington in 2023
to spell it out in black and white he testified before a Senate hearing that he has quote
always been deeply opposed to crypto Bitcoin etc and agreed with crypto naysayer Senator
Elizabeth Warren that quote the only true use case for it is criminals drug traffickers
money launderers and tax avoidance never one to waste an opportunity diamond added quote
“If I was the government I’d close it down.” We can only wonder how many people in that room
were aware of the extraordinary list of crimes and criminal allegations against JP Morgan for
which the bank has paid around $39 billion in fines penalties and settlements under Diamond’s
leadership like the $365 million in settlements in 2023 over allegations that it knowingly enabled
and financially benefited from Jeffrey Epstein’s Clanderstein operations or how about the $13
billion fine for the bank’s role in the great financial crisis of 2008 or the $2.6 $6 billion
fine for the bank’s role in Bernie Maidoff’s Ponzi scheme the $920 million fine for the alleged
manipulations of metals futures markets between 2008 and 2016 and the $55 million JP Morgan had
to pay in 2017 over allegations it was charging black and Latino borrowers higher interest rates
on auto loans or the $200 million in fines after employees including senior executives were found
to be systematically violating securities laws by conducting business without preserving records
despite repeated warnings between 2021 and 2024 or that cargo ship reportedly owned by a fund
run by JP Morgan that was seized by US customs after getting caught trying to smuggle 20 tons
of cocaine worth 1.3 billion into the US in 2019 it’s a good thing that all of this is chump
changed to JP Morgan as it can easily pay to settle any lawsuit it needs to without ever
having to admit any wrongdoing if it didn’t have such deep pockets the government might think
about closing it down no I mean just kidding that would never happen the rabbit hole of crime at JP
Morgan runs extremely deep but crypto is the real danger here so never mind diamond’s framing of
crypto as a matter of crime and national security was clearly intended to resonate with lawmakers
and regulators focused on anti-moneyaundering and combating terrorist financing and of course
provide Wall Street the stamp of approval for a crypto crackdown and crackdown the government did
through the long arm of the SEC during the Biden administration it feels like several lifetimes
ago now but it was only around 8 months ago that the US government was waging an allout war on
crypto via the agency whose behavior suggested a government that wanted to close down crypto
one way or another however following the massive success of spot Bitcoin ETFs and mounting pressure
from clients and competitors JP Morgan capitulated and announced it would grant clients access to
purchase Bitcoin so what did it mean for Diamond did he like Larry Frink and so many others on Wall
Street acknowledge that his views had changed well not really no after years of trying to pin the
word crime on Bitcoin in May 2025 Diamond adopted a new analogy to justify JP Morgan announcing
that it will allow clients to buy Bitcoin ETFs while reiterating that he is quote not a fan of
Bitcoin Diamond added quote “I don’t think you should smoke but I defend your right to smoke i
defend your right to buy Bitcoin go at it.” This shrewd analogy slaps a warning label on Bitcoin
that allows JP Morgan to meet demand and avoid losing business to competitors while sidstepping
accusations of hypocrisy and signaling that Jaime Diamond is still the responsible adult in a
chaotic industry it’s not clear who this signal is for anymore i mean since Diamond’s core audience
of Warrenite anti-crypto regulators lawmakers and shareholders has all been eviscerated by the
second Trump administration ideally for JP Morgan the US would have continued down the path it was
on under the Biden administration when the SEC was containing crypto with weaponized regulatory
uncertainty aggressive litigation and hefty penalties for crypto founders however the exact
opposite happened as Trump returned to office and effectively blessed institutional crypto
involvement and this forced the bank’s hand in the public-f facing ETF market as competitors like
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs moved quickly to offer spot bitcoin ETFs to their wealth management
clients jp Morgan could no longer afford to ignore the demand and competition and so came the
inevitable announcement in May that the bank would allow clients to buy spot Bitcoin ETFs through
its JP Morgan self-directed investment platform with holdings reflected on client statements and
this offering was a defensive play but JP Morgan followed up with an offensive earlier this month
by permitting its trading and wealth management clients globally to use shares of spot bitcoin
ETFs as collateral for loans the program is set to begin with Black Rockck’s IBIT with other ETFs
expected to be added over time as part of this policy JP Morgan will formally integrate crypto
ETF holdings into clients net worth and liquidity assessments when determining loan eligibility and
terms a practice that was previously handled on a limited and case-bycase basis as far as we can
tell JP Morgan is the first bank to make such an offering a Goldman Sachs which is rather
more progressive when it comes to crypto has been enabling clients to use BTC as collateral
for loans since 2022 but we couldn’t find an equivalent offering for BTC ETF shares now all of
this is a very lowrisk play for JP Morgan because it can offer clients all the Bitcoin exposure
they want without ever having to custody the underlying asset not to mention the fact that by
channeling exposure to crypto through centralized regulated rappers ETFs strip crypto of all the
properties that might otherwise pose a challenge to Tradfire institutions like JP Morgan with no
trace of decentralization censorship resistance or peer-to-peer functionality crypto ETFs are
just another instrument within the traditional financial system so by entering the ETF ring JP
Morgan can stave off client and asset attrition to competitors and god forbid cryptonative platforms
all the while focusing on its crypto endgame which is far more ambitious since at least 2017 JP
Morgan had been building proprietary permissioned and compliant enterprise blockchain infrastructure
with the goal of supplanting public permissionless networks as the primary rails for the future of
institutional finance tokenization and significant economic activity and this provides more than
enough incentive for Diamond to spend the rest of his career criticizing crypto as every disparaging
remark he makes is an implicit advertisement for Kexus by JP Morgan the bank’s dedicated blockchain
and digital assets division established in 2020 as Onyx and rebranded in late 2023 Kexus
is now a core part of JP Morgan’s business it has already processed over $1.5 trillion
in notional transaction volume with current daily volumes exceeding $2 billion which is not
far off from Ethereum on a bad day speaking of which Kexus happens to be based on Ethereum but
it is a permissioned ecosystem making it a walled garden accessible only to vetted institutional
clients the core components of this ecosystem include the payments rail formerly known as
JPMCoin i guess that sounded too uh crypto adjacent because it has now been rebranded
to Kexus digital payments it’s a system for tokenizing deposits made in US dollars and euros
that enables institutional clients to conduct instant programmable payments around the clock
between JP Morgan accounts worldwide its primary use case is for corporate treasury efficiency such
as optimizing intracompany liquidity accelerating B2B settlements and automating complex payment
flows and then there is KEXUS digital assets the platform for the tokenization of realworld
assets it provides solutions for digital financing enabling the execution and settlement of repo
transactions in minutes rather than days and for tokenized collateral allowing clients to tokenize
assets like money market fund shares and use them as collateral for intraday liquidity with near
instant settlement it also offers a digital debt service an end-to-end ecosystem for the issuance
trading and life cycle management of digital bonds automating processes like coupon payments
through smart contracts and lastly there is Kexus Labs the R&D arm exploring web3 solutions for
enterprise use including onchain privacy digital identity and deepen networks and if much of
this sounds like JP Morgan is trying to use SER defy then you’re on the right track however it’s
not entirely black and white because the bank’s general antagonism towards crypto hasn’t prevented
Kexus from collaborating with actual DeFi projects and this is probably because crypto is where the
real innovation happens rather than in some bank’s walled garden most notably Kexus collaborated with
Ono Finance and Chain Link for a proof of concept where JP Morgan used Kexus digital payments
as the payment leg to settle a transaction involving Onondo’s tokenized US Treasury fund
on the public ono chain test net so we can see a clear intent to connect the world institutional
finance with the actually existing DeFi ecosystem and this is a little bit more like what Black
Rockck has been doing with Biddle its tokenized fund on Ethereum but the key distinction here is
that while Black Rockck is wholeheartedly building on crypto’s existing public infrastructure JP
Morgan is experimenting with private on and off ramps to this infrastructure that it will own
and control and here we can see JP Morgan’s true crypto endgame kexus is a competitor to public
blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum with its permissioned access institutionalonly clients
a focus on tokenization of Tradfire assets and embedded compliance it’s the antithesis of
the open decentralized censorship resistant ethos of crypto networks flawed as they may
be jp Morgan has dissected the technological benefits of blockchain and systematically rebuilt
them within a proprietary network that’s aligned with the interests of Tradfi the bank’s vision for
the future of finance aligns perfectly with that imagined by the World Economic Forum and the
Bank of International Settlements which see a world of tokenized assets built on permissioned
trusted heavily regulated and generally private infrastructure the aim is to capture the high
value layer of assets and settlements while leaving the memecoin casino to the public markets
but if JP Morgan wants to accomplish this then it will need to do something about stable coins
because they represent a vast and growing parallel payment system that exists entirely outside of
the traditional banking rails which are you know the whole point of banks as a direct threat to
banks core business model stable coins could cause banks to hemorrhage deposits lose transaction fee
revenue and ultimately weaken client relationships the threat of disintermediation by Tether and
Circle must have spooked half of Wall Street because JP Morgan is now in cahoots with Bank of
America Cityroup and Wells Fargo to discuss the launch of a jointly operated stable coin the plan
reportedly involves leveraging existing bank-owned payment infrastructure such as the clearing house
and early warning services to build and distribute the new stablecoin and this collaborative
approach is reminiscent of the US banking industry’s creation of zel as a joint response to
the competitive threat from fintech payment apps like Venmo the joint stable coin initiative is a
cartel-like maneuver to marginalize cryptonative stable coins by creating a single interoperable
and fully regulated dollar with all the network effects of the US banking system behind it for
JP Morgan this would complement Kexus’s targeting of the institutional layer with a new digital
dollar operating at the commercial and retail layer taken altogether JP Morgan and its
peers are planning a complete parallel digital financial system controlled entirely by
the incumbent banking powers and when you put it like that what is a Wall Street stable coin
but a privatized central bank digital currency or CBDC the Trump administration has made its
opposition to CBDC’s very clear but mostly on the grounds that it shouldn’t be the government
issuing one but will the government object if it is private interests doing the dirty work instead
i wouldn’t count on it and lo and behold just as we began shooting this video we learned that JP
Morgan has filed a trademark for a quote digital asset platform enabling trading exchange payments
and issuance the name of this platform is JPMD and although we don’t know what the D stands for our
money is on dollar and this would strongly suggest that JP Morgan is planning its own stable coin
launch so something that could be interpreted in many different ways does it mean that the
joint effort with the other Wall Street mega banks collapsed leaving it up to Jaime Diamond
and Code to pick up the slack and claim credit or perhaps the banks each decided to repackage
their joint stable coin in different rappers for their respective audiences and that would suggest
after JPMD we might see for example B O A D for Bank of America then again it’s always possible
that JPM is reserving the JPMD trademark just to be on the safe side we can’t say for sure
but for now it sure looks like Jaime Diamond approved stable coin is in the pipeline on the
one hand this could be America’s first bankowned crypto onramp which sounds very bullish for crypto
prices on the other hand the top signal energy is quite strong with this one at any rate we will
be looking forward to what Acrobats Diamond will perform to promote his new cryptocurrency without
losing face we’ll have to wait and see but for the moment you can learn more about the future of
stable coins by watching our latest video on that right over here for today the verdict is that
JP Morgan’s crypto posturing and likely stable coin issuance is bullish for prices in the short
to medium term because it is a significant new channel for traders to keep bidding BTC up to the
high heavens but in the allimportant long-term if JP Morgan’s schemes are successful they could
very well be bearish for crypto they represent co-option and domestication of a revolutionary
technology by the powers that it was supposed to disrupt you could argue that that’s a ship that’s
already sailed some time ago but if Kexus and the muted Wall Street stable coin see real adoption
then BTC could actually start to look a lot more like a pet rock than a new monetary system and
you can bet Jaime Diamond would have plenty to say about that now if you guys want to watch
that stable coin video I talked about then you can do that right over here and if you’re not
subscribed to the channel yet you can do that right over here that’s me for now thank you guys
very much for watching and I’ll see you again soon
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