Bitcoin Is a ‘Fraud’ Says Jamie Dimon, Who Vowed to Not Talk About It Again

Jamie Dimon has yet more to say about Bitcoin—albeit things he’s known for saying before. In an in-depth interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, the JP Morgan CEO reiterated his stance that Bitcoin is “a fraud.”

“If you mean crypto like Bitcoin, I’ve always said it’s a fraud,” Dimon told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, adding that there is no hope for it as a currency.

He also called Bitcoin a “public decentralized Ponzi scheme,” but conceded that blockchain and smart contracts have value.

“If it's a crypto coin that can do something like a smart contract that has value, there will be smart contracts and blockchain works,” Dimon said. “To the extent crypto is accessing certain blockchain things, that might have some value.”

Crypto Twitter reliably took a break from watching the Bitcoin halving countdown clock to poke fun at the CEO.

“Buddy is fudding our bags for a better entry,” Wallstreetbets said on Twitter.

“The Matrix likes to send signals to buy more Bitcoin,” Bitcoin Munger said. “This is one of those signals.”

While Dimon may see value in smart contracts and blockchain, the long-time critic of Bitcoin has said the only use cases for the digital currency are for “sex trafficking, tax avoidance, anti-money laundering, [and] terrorism financing.”

Dimon has said that if the “bad use cases” can’t be solved, regulators must “shut it down.” That would be a tall order, considering there are over 20,000 Bitcoin nodes currently online.

After years of discussing the number one digital asset by market capitalization, Dimon swore not to speak about Bitcoin again during an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

“This is the last time I'm ever talking about this on CNBC, so help me God,” Dimon proclaimed.

The executive’s constant reproach of Bitcoin does stand in contrast to investment moves by his own firm. JP Morgan is an “authorized participant” in spot Bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Invesco/Galaxy Digital, and Fidelity, which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved earlier this year.

In a December report, however, a JP Morgan analyst expressed skepticism about the long-term effect of Bitcoin ETFs on the market and said Ethereum is poised to outperform Bitcoin in 2024.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.