JPMorgan Flips the Script—Now Pushing Bitcoin to Clients Despite Dimon’s Past Skepticism
Wall Street’s love-hate tango with crypto takes another turn as JPMorgan—once the poster child for Bitcoin skepticism—greenlights client access. CEO Jamie Dimon, who famously called BTC ’a fraud,’ now oversees the bank’s cautious embrace of digital assets. Guess even bankers can’t resist FOMO when fees are on the table.
The move signals a tectonic shift in institutional adoption—or just another calculated revenue grab dressed in ’client demand’ clothing. Either way, the irony isn’t lost: the same firm that warned about crypto’s risks is now monetizing its volatility. Classic finance—hate the game, love the commission.
Jamie Dimon says he still doesn’t like BTC
After the announcement, Dimon clarified that he is not a fan of Bitcoin. However, by allowing bitcoin into the bank, it tells how much has changed since 2017. Back then, he called Bitcoin a “fraud,” said it was like the tulip bubble, and said it would burst.
He went as far as saying that he WOULD fire any JPMorgan worker caught dealing with it. In 2024, he said that he would no longer discuss Bitcoin publicly. He also said that Bitcoin “has no intrinsic value” and is heavily used by criminals involved in sex trafficking, money laundering, and ransomware activities.
However, although he said all this, JPMorgan has stayed involved in the crypto market by letting its wealth management clients buy Bitcoin. The bank is also a registered participant in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF.
Recently, JPMorgan Chase completed its first structured trade on a public blockchain. The company had only worked in private, permissioned networks for institutional clients for years.
The testnet deal was done with the help of Ondo Finance (a leader in tokenizing real-world assets) and chainlink (the top cross-chain oracle network). Both companies provided infrastructure, and Kinexys, JPMorgan’s blockchain division, ran it.
Meanwhile, investors are reacting on all social media, saying Dimon contradicts himself by saying he doesn’t like BTC but will allow his clients to buy.
Bitcoin rally is on
During the Asian trade session on May 19, the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply by 4%. It fell from an “important level,” as Glassnode put it. The platform for analyzing data showed that Bitcoin’s rise stopped just below $106,600, a key mark where 31,000 BTC are held.
Also, after Moody’s downgraded the US credit rating and US Treasury yields went up, investors became more interested in risky assets like Bitcoin. However, the macroeconomic pressures got stronger and influenced the drop.
Meanwhile, Strategy (MSTR) bought 7,390 BTC for about $764.9 million at $103,498 per Bitcoin on average. With this new purchase, the company now has a total of 576,230 BTC in Bitcoin, worth about $60 billion at the current market price of $105,000 per Bitcoin. The average price at which Strategy bought all of its bitcoins is now $69,726.
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