JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon could also be calling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin “decentralized Ponzi schemes,” however this hasn’t cease the world’s largest funding financial institution from hiring a brand new head of digital belongings regulatory coverage.
Aaron Iovine, who held an analogous place on the now-bankrupt crypto lending agency Celsius, joined JPMorgan, per a Bloomberg Legislation report.
Iovine’s LinkedIn profile says he labored at Celsius between February and September this 12 months, following an virtually three-year spell at Cross River, a crypto-friendly New Jersey-based monetary providers firm.
He’ll reportedly work with JPMorgan’s regulatory affairs group headed by Sharon Yang, who beforehand served as a deputy assistant secretary for worldwide monetary markets on the Treasury Division.
Decrypt has reached out to each JPMorgan and Iovine for feedback and was but to listen to on the time of this writing.
JPMorgan and crypto
Iovine’s appointment got here lower than a month after JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon as soon as once more lashed out at cryptocurrencies, saying that he’s a “main skeptic of crypto tokens […] like Bitcoin,” and evaluating the brand new asset class to “decentralized Ponzi schemes.”
This was not the primary time Dimon had turned his consideration to crypto.
The 66-year-old billionaire first spoke about Bitcoin again in January 2014, not lengthy earlier than the collapse of Mt. Gox, stating that the world’s largest digital asset was “a horrible retailer of worth” and that the cryptocurrency “might be replicated time and again.”
Over time, Dimon has known as Bitcoin a “fraud” and “idiot’s gold,” however in 2019, JPMorgan launched its personal U.S.-dollar pegged stablecoin dubbed JPM Coin.
The financial institution additionally permits its wealth administration purchasers to purchase into Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Money, and Ethereum Traditional, in addition to shares in Grayscale Bitcoin Belief (GBTC).
Earlier this month, JPMorgan additionally posted a gap for a digital belongings counsel place with its company and funding financial institution in New York, with the profitable applicant to be chargeable for a variety of duties, together with advising on regulatory and compliance points, every day enterprise help and documentation points associated to the financial institution’s digital belongings initiatives.
