Jamie Dimon, the CEO of one of the largest banks in the world, JP Morgan, has said Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency Libra is a “neat idea” that will “never happen.”
The CEO of JPMorgan made his comments on the cryptocurrency during a conference by the Institute of International Finance in Washington, adding that we “already have stablecoins, so they’re not the first to do that.”
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO, on #Librahttps://t.co/5i3EECex0z
— Francisco Memoria (@FranciscoMemor) October 21, 2019
The Libra cryptocurrency is, according to Facebook, set to be backed by a basket of fiat currencies. The crypto’s backing would be of 50% the U.S. dollar and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, 18% the euro, 11% the British pound, 14% the Japanese yen, and 7% the Singaporean dollar.
Dimon’s comments came shortly after some of the Libra Association’s initial members, including PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, and eBay, left the organization over the regulatory scrutiny they’ve been facing, as well as the currency’s potential to be used to launder money or finance terrorism.
David Marcus, the co-creator of the Libra cryptocurrency project, has revealed that instead of launching a “synthetic unit” the Libra Association could, instead, launch a “series of stablecoins, a dollar stablecoin, a euro stablecoin, a sterling pound stablecoin, etc.” as it looks to work with regulators.
It’s worth noting JPMorgan became the first U.S. bank to launch its own cryptocurrency this year after it launched the USD-backed “JPM Coin.” Dimon himself is a well-known bitcoin critic who has in the past called the flagship cryptocurrency a fraud, even though he later on revealed he regretted the comment.
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