Jamie Dimon Calls Bitcoin a Useless ‘Pet Rock’ at Davos

In a CNBC report interview From Davos, a visibly amused Dimon said he was giving up on giving his opinion on cryptocurrency. Asked about the new Bitcoin ETF approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Dimon interrupted CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin, also of the New York Times, to say:

“So this is a big thing, this is the last time I’m going to talk about this on CNBC, God help me,” Dimon said to laughter from Sorkin studio hosts Joe Kernen and Becky Quick.

This kind of exasperation has become a staple of Dimon’s when discussing Bitcoin. He said he never talk about bitcoin again since 2017.

Dimon continued to criticize Bitcoin, stating that “it doesn’t do anything.”

“I call it the pet rock,” he said.

Dimon then corrected himself and said he did think Bitcoin did have uses. He simply added that they were all illegal, such as money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or paying for sex trafficking.

There is evidence to support Dimon’s claims. The Government Accountability Office found that 15 of the 27 online commercial sex sites it examined in June 2021 report digital currencies accepted. While the UN has issued warnings that cryptocurrency platforms are often used for money laundering by criminal groups in Southeast Asia.

Despite these concerns, the cryptocurrency market has been exceptionally strong in recent years after a near-death experience in 2022.crypto winter. “In 2023, the market capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency sector increased by 95%although it is still down 35% from its all-time high during the pandemic. Additionally, the recent approval of the ETF by the SEC is a signal that cryptocurrency is becoming a legitimate financial asset. And despite Dimon’s objections to owning cryptocurrencies himself, many retail investors do. A 2022 study found that 36% of millennials and 20% of adults overall own your own cryptocurrencies.

Dimon’s Story and Bitcoin Talks

Over the years, Dimon has openly expressed his dislike of cryptocurrencies, calling people who invest in Bitcoin “stupid”, and even threatened to fire any employee caught investing in it. Meanwhile, he called the asset itself “exaggerated fraud” and a “waste of time.” At a Senate hearing in December, Dimon said that if it were up to him, he “close it,” prompting a surprised reaction from crypto advocate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).

Other major financial companies like Black rock And Goldman Sachs had similar positions before changing their minds when crypto became more popular and lucrative. In 2020, Goldman Sachs published a analyst note explaining why he didn’t see Bitcoin as a widely shared asset class across both Wall Street and crypto circles. And while his chief investment officer is still Beware of BitcoinCEO David Solomon has indicated that Goldman Sachs would be interested in acquire cryptocurrency companies at a bargain price.

When CNBC asked Dimon about companies that offer crypto products to their customers, he responded with the same disdain he reserved for the asset itself.

“First of all, I don’t care,” he told Sorkin. “So stop talking about this bullshit.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was once in Dimon’s camp as a vocal critic of Bitcoin, concerned that its use would be limited beyond criminal activity. In 2017, Fink called Bitcoin a “money laundering index” and that the only thing it served was to illustrate the high demand for this specific financial crime. Fink eventually changed his mind, though. By 2020, he thought it could become a global market. Fast forward to this month, when Bitcoin got the stamp of approval to become a spot ETF and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, owns the third largest number of Bitcoins of any public company.

Fidelity, another asset manager, was an early adopter of Bitcoin, starting to mine the cryptocurrency in 2014 before launching its first trading platform in 2018. While BlackRock’s other competitors, State Street And Avant-garderespectively the second and third largest asset managers in the world, have chosen Stay away from Bitcoin quite.

“The case for cryptocurrencies is weak,” Vanguard told Bloomberg in December. “Unlike stocks and bonds, most cryptoassets have no intrinsic economic value and generate no cash flows.”

This line of thinking was similar to that of Dimon, who in his CNBC interview repeatedly raised concerns about Bitcoin’s ultimate function—other than, as he put it, facilitating and encouraging crime. Instead, Dimon sought to differentiate Bitcoin from blockchain, the technology that allows Bitcoin to be traded without the approval of a centralized agency. Bitcoin advocates tout the ability to trade the asset without having to rely on a bank or clearing authority as the primary advantage that makes it different from any other currency or asset. Blockchain, Dimon argued, was useful for exchanging assets or data. Although he thought that even on that topic, enough ink had been spilled.

“It’s very small,” he said of blockchain. “I think we’ve wasted too many words on it.”

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