JPMorgan ( JPM ) CEO Jamie Dimon doesn’t mince words when it comes to his views on cryptocurrencies.
The Wall Street boss, who famously called digital tokens “decentralized Ponzi schemes” at a regulatory hearing in September, reiterated his criticism of the crypto asset during an interview with Fox Business Network.
“I called it a decentralized Ponzi scheme because people just fanned it – fanned it and fanned it – and they wrote tons of books about it, the money that was stolen from it, what people knew and didn’t know,” he said when asked what the lessons were. learned about cryptocurrency after the collapse of FTX.
In an interview aired Tuesday, Dimon, as he has in the past, distinguished his skepticism about crypto assets from his views on blockchain technology as a form of speeding up financial transactions. His bank has been working on creating its own custom blockchain and token, JPM Coin, which aims to facilitate the transfer of payments to customers.
Meanwhile, he said that cryptocurrencies have made people “hysterical” and that it is the government’s responsibility to protect investors.
“Many people were injured [by crypto]Dimon said. “These were pensioners, grandmothers, people with lower incomes, and that was a shame.”
The bankruptcy of the floundering cryptocurrency exchange wiped out an estimated $9 billion worth of crypto investments, according to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.
“It should have been put into some kind of regulatory framework right away so that there would be some protection for investors,” he said, adding that regulators had started coming up with safeguards but now “the door has opened” for them to do so.
In a separate interview with CNBC last month, Dimon compared crypto tokens to “pet rocks.”
“I have no interest in it, by the way, so I hate to talk about it,” Dimon said in an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday.
—
Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc
Click here for the latest stock ticker trends from the Yahoo Finance platform
Click here for the latest stock market news and in-depth analysis, including stock-changing events
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
Download the Yahoo Finance app for Apple or Android
Follow Yahoo Finance at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedInand YouTube