One month after calling Bitcoin a “fraud,” JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon continued his rhetoric against the skyrocketing cryptocurrency and those that support it. Only this time, Mr. Dimon chose to hit bitcoin investors as well by calling them stupid who "will pay the price."
Speaking at the Institute of International Finance conference on Friday, October 13, Mr. Dimon painted bitcoin with dark colors. "I could care less what bitcoin trades for, how it trades, why it trades, who trades it. If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day", he said.
“The only value of bitcoin is what the other guy’ll pay for it,” Mr. Dimon continued, and he explained it by saying:
"Honestly I think there’s a good chance of the buyers out there are out there jazzing it up every day so that maybe you’ll buy it too, and take them out."
Who cares about bitcoin?
The JP Morgan CEO appeared confident that bitcoin would crash to zero eventually, even after reaching 100,000 dollars; he is sure that bitcoin will have the same trajectory as the Tulip bubble in Netherlands:
I’ve also told people that it can trade at $100,000 before it trades to zero. Tulip bulbs traded for $75,000 or something like that — Who cares about bitcoin? The world economy is so big.
The fierce attack by Jamie Dimon came only two days after he had proclaimed on CNBC that he was "not going to talk about bitcoin anymore." But one has to wonder why he keeps on attacking bitcoin. When Dimon called bitcoin a fraud a month ago, the cryptocurrency was exiting a strong August momentum, but suddenly the price saw a rough correction as bears took advantage of China’s decision to shut down domestic cryptocurrency exchanges.
Now, Dimon’s new attack comes at the end of a week during which bitcoin price broke one all-time high after another even climbing at $5,840 on October 12.
Dimon: CNBC, nonstop bitcoin
Mr. Dimon did not stop his attack at bitcoin and its investors. He also had harsh words for the press saying “every day, you have CNBC, nonstop bitcoin” while he made a strange parallelism between the behemoth company he leads, JP Morgan, and the cryptocurrencies on blockchain: "JP Morgan alone, $6 trillion, we move all this money, and bitcoin in total, all these currencies, 50 billion dollars, maybe a billion dollars in trades a day.""
While Mr. Dimon is an influential cryptocurrency opponent (even though his own company invested recently in bitcoin-based futures), it seems that he may have problems convincing other members of his family about his views on bitcoin. His daughter owns 2 BTC as he revealed to his audience: "When I made that ‘stupid statement’ calling bitcoin a fraud, my daughter sent me an email saying, ‘Dad, I own two bitcoins.’… My formerly smart daughter," Dimon said.
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Jamie Dimon said he wouldn't talk about bitcoin anymore. That lasted one day https://t.co/xu8mZjHTux pic.twitter.com/dxS73kFkz9
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) October 13, 2017