‘If I was the government, I’d close it down’ — Chase CEO on crypto
JPMorgan Chase chair and CEO Jamie Dimon told several United States lawmakers that if he had the authority in government, he would try to shut down crypto.
In a Dec. 6 hearing of the Senate Banking Committee on oversight of Wall Street Firms, Dimon responded to questioning from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who claimed North Korea had funded much of its missile program using “proceeds of crypto crime” in addition to funding Hamas. The JPMorgan Chase CEO said he had “always been deeply opposed to crypto” and associated digital assets with “criminals” and “drug traffickers” in addition to tax avoidance.
“If I was the government, I’d close it down,” said Dimon.
The JPMorgan Chase CEO testified before the Senate committee alongside CEOs of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, State Street and Morgan Stanley. Dimon has previously referred to cryptocurrencies as “decentralized Ponzi schemes” and Bitcoin (BTC) as a “fraud.”
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Warren questioned the other CEOs on whether crypto firms should be subject to the same Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules U.S. banks are obligated to uphold — to which all responded in the affimative. In a statement to Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for the crypto education-focused organization CEDAR Innovation Foundation said Warren’s claims revealed “a lack of understanding of blockchain technology.”
“It is misleading to claim that crypto facilitates illicit finance any more so than traditional fiat currency,” said CEDAR. “The statements by Senator Warren and the bank CEOs are a direct recognition of the promise of crypto, decentralized finance, and blockchain technology as a direct threat to the traditional financial system.”
The Massachusetts senator has been a vocal opponent of crypto in the U.S. government, often linking crypto transactions to terrorism and pushing for legislation aimed at cutting down on the illicit use of digital assets. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, many U.S. lawmakers have supported Warren’s efforts to raise attention to the role of crypto in financing terrorism.
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The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the three month period.
The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.
Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.
And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.
Pic: Reuters
Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Am I satisfied with the numbers published today? Of course not. I want growth to be stronger, to come sooner, and also to be felt by families right across the country.”
“It’s why in my Mansion House speech last night, I announced some of the biggest reforms of our pension system in a generation to unlock long term patient capital, up to £80bn to help invest in small businesses and scale up businesses and in the infrastructure needs,” Ms Reeves later told Sky News in an interview.
“We’re four months into this government. There’s a lot more to do to turn around the growth performance of the last decade or so.”
New economy data tests chancellor’s growth plan
The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.
The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.
The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.
It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.
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The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.
The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.
Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.
The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.
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