JPMorgan boss, modern day robber baron, and man “who is richer than you“, Jamie Dimon, wants you to know that he isn’t about to take his Ferragamos off the throat of Bitcoin anytime soon.
Ten days after calling Bitcoin a “fraud” that will be “shut down” by governments and contending that he’ll fire anyone caught trading it for “being stupid,” Dimon was back on the offensive on Friday in New Delhi, India.
“Right now these crypto things are kind of a novelty. People think they’re kind of neat. But the bigger they get, the more governments are going to close them down,” Dimon said during an interview with CNBC-TV18 in New Delhi. “It’s creating something out of nothing that to me is worth nothing,” he added. “It will end badly.”
He also praised the technology behind Bitcoin and tried – very patiently – to explain why these cryptocurrencies are going to zero, which they most certainly are. Here’s the video:
Obviously, he’s entirely correct.
So to the good folks at Blockswater (that would be the algorithmic liquidity provider that filed a market abuse report against Jamie with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority for “spreading false and misleading information” about bitcoin) you can go ahead and forget about discouraging Dimon from calling Bitcoin what it is.
Bitcoin itself is careening lower on Friday, but is still well off the levels hit after Dimon’s initial attack. It’s down 24% this month:
Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s Mark Cudmore is out with another piece on Bitcoin and the religious status it commands among adherents.
You can read that piece in full below…
Via Bloomberg
It may be ill-advised to fight the bitcoin rally, even if conventional asset-price metrics suggest the cryptocurrency has little or no inherent value. The “bubble” may not last forever but it can potentially sustain for many years due to the strength of its cult.
- The most compelling bullish argument for bitcoin is that it’s becoming a modern religion. Skeptics shouldn’t underestimate the power of true believers
- Numerous signs support this theory, proposed by Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal. Just a few of the examples he gave are the revered status of the mysterious founder whom nobody has been able to definitively identify, the mystical holy text of the white paper, the “disciples” on the initial mailing list who interacted with Satoshi Nakamoto, and the iconography
- At first glance, it may seem crazy to ascribe such traits to a speculative financial instrument, but it would be ignorant to overlook the possibility of religion evolving in this modern age of science, technology and capitalism
- The book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” by Yuval Noah Harari, argues that our power to believe common myths is the critical reason why our species dominates the planet, as it enables large numbers of strangers to cooperate. Certainly, human history shows religious faiths have incredible power over people, society and culture — and hence real value
- Bitcoin might never become a serious asset class for non-believers, nor ever be a viable and efficient currency, but it can still retain value through its quasi-religious nature. Holding it as an investment may be a matter of faith, but that’s precisely why financially logical economic arguments are an inappropriate framework if trying to challenge it
