JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon now pro-Bitcoin according to Trump

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, has long been one of the strongest critics of Bitcoin in the financial world. The billionaire even called for Bitcoin to be banned. According to presidential candidate Donald Trump, Jamie Dimon has now "suddenly changed his mind" about Bitcoin.

Does this mean that alongside Larry Fink, the CEO of the world's largest asset manager, the CEO of the largest bank on the planet by market capitalization has now also gone from being a Bitcoin opponent to a supporter? And could this have something to do with the potential appointment of Dimon as Treasury Secretary under a Trump presidency?

Back in 2017, Jamie Dimon polarized people with his dislike of Bitcoin. At the time, he said that he would fire any of his employees who traded in Bitcoin for stupidity.

At the World Economic Forum in January 2023, Dimon described Satoshi Nakamoto's creation as a "bloated scam" and doubted that the total supply of Bitcoin would really end at just under 21 million units.

Even in January 2024, when his bank was already involved in the Bitcoin spot ETFs, he continued to be critical. He again claimed that Bitcoin was being used for money laundering, fraud, tax evasion and sex trafficking and advised people to have nothing to do with it.

The irony is that in its role as an authorized participant in several Bitcoin ETFs, JPMorgan itself has to "trade" Bitcoin - in other words, do what the boss wanted to fire employees for "stupidity" less than seven years earlier. JPMorgan even had to disclose that it held Bitcoin spot ETFs in the first quarter.

It is also interesting to note that Dimon's bank paid 13 billion US dollars in fines as part of a settlement in 2013 because JPMorgan had overstated the quality of securities in the run-up to the global financial crisis in 2008. Just last year, two JPMorgan traders were also sentenced to prison for attempting to manipulate the market for the precious metal silver.

It is telling that those who want to give Bitcoin a dirty image are often dirty themselves. Just this week, for example, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who said in 2017 that Bitcoin was the ideal choice for criminals, was convicted of corruption. Among other things, he is said to have accepted bribes in the form of gold and cash.

The rumor that the JPMorgan CEO has now changed his mind about Bitcoin was started by none other than the possible next US President Donald Trump. The major interview with Bloomberg, which was held on June 25 and published on July 16, is also about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The 78-year-old talks about Jamie Dimon's attitude towards the asset class as he justifies his own change of heart regarding digital assets.

And if you ask Jamie Dimon, Jamie Dimon was, you know, very negative and now he's suddenly changed his mind a little bit.
_{Donald Trump}

Positive statements on Bitcoin from the JPMorgan CEO have not been heard before. Accordingly, this statement caused quite a stir. For example, Forbes' digital assets section ran the headline: "He's changed his mind - Trump reveals JPMorgan CEO's 'sudden' bitcoin and crypto flip amid huge price rise".

However, Jamie Dimon has repeatedly differentiated in recent months that he sees a use case for blockchain technology or tokenization, but that something like bitcoin is a "pet rock".

JPMorgan has also been active in the crypto sector for some time. The major bank has developed its own blockchain and even launched the "JPM Coin", a stablecoin backed by US dollars for institutional use, back in 2019.

It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump has misunderstood his close friend Jamie Dimon or whether he has actually come to like Bitcoin, as the presidential candidate suggests in the interview. It is also possible that the statement that he has "changed his mind a little" could simply refer to the pro-blockchain stance of JPMorgan and its CEO.

There should be clarity at the latest when the JPMorgan CEO is next asked about Bitcoin in an interview.

However, it is also conceivable that Dimon wants to make himself more popular with Trump by taking a pro-Bitcoin stance. Elsewhere in the interview, the 78-year-old claims that he would "definitely consider" making Jamie Dimon US Secretary of the Treasury. There may be a connection here.

Donald Trump is positioning himself as a big supporter of Bitcoin in his election campaign and it would not fit in with this stance if he were to appoint one of its strongest critics as Secretary of the Treasury.

If Jamie Dimon really has changed his mind about Bitcoin, he would not be the first influential person from the financial industry to do so. This week, Larry Fink, the CEO and co-founder of the world's largest asset manager, emphasized that he is no longer a skeptic since he has taken a closer look at Bitcoin.

Mark Cuban, a well-known investor from the US, has also recently attracted attention with "bullish" statements about Bitcoin. The billionaire posted on the 𝕏 platform yesterday that the stars are aligned for a sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin - partly due to geopolitical uncertainty and the loss of confidence in the US dollar as a reserve currency. According to Cuban, the vision of the Bitcoin maximalists could come true and Satoshi Nakamoto's creation could become a global currency and a "safe haven".

The investment star was also a strong critic in the past. In 2019, Cuban was still saying that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, nobody needs it and he prefers bananas.

It remains to be seen whether Jamie Dimon has the courage to admit publicly one day that he has been wrong about Bitcoin in the past. It is still only rumors - started by Trump - that this is the case.