JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon believes that bitcoin “is a fraud” and “it won’t end well.”
At the Delivering Alpha conference on Tuesday, Dimon said that the cryptocurrency “isn’t just a real thing” and will be closed eventually, according to a report in CNBC.
“I’m not saying ‘go short bitcoin and sell $100,000 of bitcoin before it goes down,” Dimon said. “This is not advice of what to do. My daughter bought bitcoin, it went up and now she thinks she’s a genius.”
In addition, Dimon also said that he would fire anyone at JPMorgan Chase “in a second” for trading bitcoin. He thinks that the virtual currency trading is against the bank’s rules. He called the bitcoin “stupid” and “far too dangerous.”
He said that bitcoin “won’t end well” and “will eventually blow up.”
The billionaire CEO of JPMorgan thinks that bitcoin is useful for drug dealers, murderers, and North Korea.
“If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than U.S. dollars,” Dimon said. “So there may be a market for that, but it would be a limited market.”
Bitcoin Price
Bitcoin has dropped more than 11% following the Dimon’s comments.
The virtual currency fell as low as $3,766.36 on Wednesday and traded down 8.7% at $3,792.43 as of 11:03 a.m. in New York, according to CoinDesk.
Bitcoin has surged 315% this year. The digital currency hit a record high just below $5,000 at the start of this month. However, the price of the digital currency is down over 16% so far this month on worries about regulations in China and Dimon’s criticism. China recently banned initial coin offerings (ICOs), an unregulated way of raising funds by offering new units of a new cryptocurrency.
