JPMorgan Chase. Source: Forbes
The CEOs of leading cryptocurrency companies Ripple and Abra have heavily dismissed the purpose of JPM’s recently announced cryptocurrency, dubbed ‘JPM Coin’.
As Cryptopotato reported earlier in February, major financial institution JPMorgan Chase has created its own cryptocurrency in order to settle transactions between clients of its wholesale payments business instantly. What followed was a less than favorable reaction from industry proponents.
Speaking at last week’s DC Blockchain Summit, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO at Ripple, who’s behind the third largest cryptocurrency – XRP, dismissed any purpose whatsoever behind JPM Coin.
Referring to an older interview with a guy from Morgan Stanley, Garlinghouse stressed on the lack of any interoperability of JPM’s new cryptocurrency.
This guy from Morgan Stanley was interviewing me, I said ‘So, is Morgan Stanley going to use the JPM Coin?’ And he said ‘probably not.’ So, well is Citi going to use the JPM Coin? Is BBVA? Is PNC? And the answer is no. – He said, while adding – “Are we going to have all these different coins? Are we back to where we are with lack of interoperability? I don’t get it.
Going even further, Ripple’s CEO shared his concerns about the complete lack of purpose behind the bank’s digital currency. He outlined that it fails to solve any real issue.
He’s not the only one to speak against JPM Coin. The CEO at Abra – a cryptocurrency-based payment platform, Bill Barhydt, also said that enterprise blockchains and the cryptocurrencies that stem from them are “nonsense”:
It’s exactly what’s happening with this enterprise blockchain nonsense; where people have this fallacy that they’re going to make blockchain work inside the firewall. It’s all going to fail miserably[.]
What both of them said seems much like a compliment, compared to the severe criticism from Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum and the creator of Cardano. The latter was far more straightforward, calling JPM Coin an “abomination of a concept.”
But it seems that not every major industry participant is so negative on the bank’s new cryptocurrency.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO at the world’s largest cryptocurrency by means of traded volumes – Binance, saw a lot of positivity in the recent move by JPM.
According to him, adoption is important and to be cherished, regardless of where it comes from.
Unpopular opinion: JPM/FB coins.
In a decentralized world, anyone can do as they please (within limits, so long as they don’t hurt others). The more people adopt #crypto, the better.
Adoption is #adoption. Welcome!
How well will they do? Well, let’s wait and see. http://t.co/ke3wYhsexI
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) March 9, 2019
The truth is that JPMorgan Chase is a major financial institution recognized throughout the entire world, harboring over $2.7 trillion worth of assets under management.
Back to Brad Garlinghouse, it seems that even he, despite his heavy criticizm, sees the value of the bank’s involvement in the field. After all, he did say:
“I think it’s great for the blockchain and crypto industry to have players like JPM leaning in.”
And it does seem like more major players are truly stepping in. Last year Cryptopotato reported that Facebook may be diving deeper into the field of blockchain. The social media giant’s efforts into the industry seem to have amplified since as there are currently 19 blockchain-related positions open for hiring according to Facebook’s official career page.
Going further, another major financial institution, Fidelity Investments, has also launched its digital asset platform for select clients after a prolonged period of testing.
The bottom line is that there is a huge silver lining to big-name companies recognizing the merits of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in general. It’s important to achieve mass adoption first before we start figuring out the pecking order.