Banking Giant JPMorgan Announces Crypto Support For Clients

On July 16, JPMorgan announced it had granted its wealth management clients access to cryptocurrency funds, becoming the first major US bank to support crypto.

Daniel Pinto, co-president of JPMorgan, hinted in discussions earlier in the year that he was interested in expansion into the crypto space.

In a humorous thought, rewind back to 2017 when CEO Jamie Dimon said “Bitcoin is a fraud”, and if he found out any JPMorgan employees were trading cryptos, “I would fire them in a second, for two reasons: It is against our rules and they are stupid, and both are dangerous.”

Five Crypto Funds Offered

With total assets worth US$3.4 trillion, JPMorgan is targeting the wealth management business with five new cryptocurrency products launched on July 19.

The funds initially offered are:

• Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust
• Grayscale Ethereum Trust
• Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust
• Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust
• Osprey Bitcoin Trust

JPMorgan’s advisers can buy and sell crypto on behalf of their clients; they cannot recommend any cryptos, but can only execute the crypto trades as instructed.

We are excited to be onboarded to the JPMorgan wealth platform. OBTC remains the lowest-priced publicly traded bitcoin fund in the US, and we believe JPMorgan’s clients will see value in the product.

Greg King, founder and CEO, Osprey Funds

A recent report estimated that US$43 billion is already held in global Bitcoin investment funds, and this new offering by JPMorgan follows other giants such as Goldman Sachs, Blockrock, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

JPM Coin

JPMorgan is also heavily investing in blockchain technology to facilitate instantaneous payments, including launching a coin called “JPM Coin” to be used for business-to-business money movement.

JPM Coin is a permissioned, shared ledger system that serves as a payment rail and deposit account ledger, enabling participating JPMorgan clients to transfer US dollars held on deposit with JPMorgan. JPM Coin facilitates real-time value movement, helping to solve common hurdles of traditional cross-border payments.

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JPMorgan Investing Heavily into Blockchain

It also launched a new service called “Liink” through Onyx by JPMorgan, which is a platform accelerator for businesses wanting to adopt Blockchain with a payments network infrastructure:

https://twitter.com/jpmorgan/status/1387368507411603462

Over 25 of the world’s largest banks have already signed up to join in helping to improve transaction and information flows around the world powered by a peer-to-peer network and smart contracts.