J.P. Morgan Chase Will Launch Its Own USD Pegged Stable-Coin/Cryptocurrency

Jamie Dimon may have hated Bitcoin, however they have seemingly been interested in blockchain for quite some time. Now JPMorgan announcing that JP Morgan will be launching it’s own cryptocurrency/stable-coin, which will be backed by the U.S. dollar, on a 1:1 ratio.

Less than two years after J.P. Morgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon famously bashed bitcoin as a “fraud” that global governments would “crush,” he is pushing his company headfirst into the cryptocurrency/blockchain space, launching its very own digital coin. It will be the first major American bank to do so.

The JPM coins can then be used to transfer money to someone else’s account over the blockchain. The recipient of JPM Coins would then exchange them for fiat currency. The technology would reduce the typical settlement time for transactions, the bank says in its handy FAQ section, without mentioning any details about how much these instant blockchain-based transactions will cost customers.

Image Source: JPMorgan Chase

However, the company said that the JPM Coins are in testing for the time being, and only institutional clients will have access to the pilot program, mentioning that savings may be passed on to their customers:

JPM Coin is currently designed for business-to-business money movement flows, and because we are still in a testing phase, we don’t have plans to make this available to individuals at this stage. That said, the cost-savings and efficiency benefits would extend to the end customers of our institutional clients.

In other words, you won’t be able to use JPM Coin to trade other cryptos on exchanges. Well, not yet anyway.

The bank noted that JPM will run on the Quorum Blockchain at first, and then will be extended to other platforms and will eventually be operable on all standard blockchain networks.

What’s interesting to note is JPMorgan’s changing stance on cryptocurrency products. As Reuters reminds us, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a “fraud” in 2017, saying that cryptocurrencies are “worse than tulips bulbs” at the time. He tempered his view a few months later when he said he regretted calling Bitcoin a fraud, but still said he wasn’t interested in the coin. JPMorgan’s position is now in favor of cryptocurrencies as long as “they’re properly controlled and regulated,” according to its presentation page.