JP Morgan Chase chief executive, Jamie Dimon, ironically claims that crypto-currency, BitCoin, is a “fraud” that should only be invested in by murderers, drug dealers and people living in North Korea, Ecuador and Venezuela. And it would know. The financial services giant has spent decades defrauding its customers, and it didn’t need a new currency to do it. Not that it has stopped them from trying to develop one anyway.
He’s right, in a sense. BitCoin will not be our saviour. But not for the reasons Dimon claims.
BitCoin will not be our saviour. But not for the reasons JP Morgan chief, Jamie Dimon claims.
In a stunning – but not surprising – act of irony, Dimon condemned the validity of crypto-currency, Bitcoin, claiming it was a “fraud” that should only be invested in by murderers, drug dealers, and people living in North Korea, Ecuador and Venezuela.
“If we had a trader who traded bitcoin I’d fire him in a second for two reasons,” the bank boss told the Barclays’ financial conference in New York last week. “One, it’s against our rules. Two, it’s stupid. You can’t have a business where people are going to invent a currency out of thin air. It won’t end well… someone is going to get killed and then the government is going to come down on it.
“The value of a single bitcoin is around $4,200. The crypto-currency, which can be manufactured using computing power and is then stored on servers, was valued at less than $250 per unit at the end of 2015. Don’t ask me to short it, it could be at $20,000 before this happens but it will eventually blow up. It’s a fraud and honestly I’m just shocked anyone can’t see it for what it is,” Mr Dimon said, describing Bitcoin as “worse than tulip bulbs”.
“The only good argument I’ve ever heard … is that if you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea.. or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off dealing in BitCoin than in US dollars. You are better off bypassing the system of your country even if what I just said is true. There may be a market for that but it’s a limited market.”
This despite Dimon himself having been charged with 48 violations of banking and securities fraud worth $28,675,456,874.00 in fines.
Dimon seems to have changed his tune since 2013, when he was denied patents for a BitCoin equivalent 175 times. He has spent the following four years talking down the validity and veracity of BitCoin as a currency solution.
“You can’t have a business where people are going to invent a currency out of thin air.”
Actually you can. It’s called central banking and it has operated this way since 1667.
Dimon, his colleagues and conspirators within the banking sector and Federal Governments in the US, UK, Australia and most other developed nations want you to believe that your taxes pay for everything.
This is, in fact, not the case. Every cent that is spent on building schools and roads, bailing out banks, providing subsidies to mining, electricity and gas companies, paying government salaries, funding health care, the police force, firefighters and defence are new dollars pumped into the economy via… that’s right, the central bank. With the permission and administration of… the treasury.
Taxes are recouped after the money has been spent but they only pay for a fraction of spending. And they didn’t need your taxes in the first place to pay for it. Taxes address inflation. Not spending.
#howmoneyworks
“It won’t end well… someone is going to get killed and then the government is going to come down on it.”
Plenty of people have died due to economic hardship. This hasn’t prevented governments from launching ahead with demonetisation programs, currency ‘innovations’ or being forced by banks, the IMF or World Bank to enact austerity, causing even more hardship, poverty and fatalities.
In Greece infant mortalities increased by 43% between 2008-2010, while birth rates dropped by 22.5%. Stillbirths rose by 21% due to cuts in prenatal health services, chronic diseases increased by 24% and more than 3000 deaths were attributed to fatal hospital infections. And according to research from the University of Portsmouth, Greek austerity caused 500 male suicides, a 0.43% increase for every 1% cut in government spending.
More than 822,000 people died in Argentina during its Great Depression between 1988-2002, according to UN estimates.
More than 10,000 suicides were tied to the economic crisis JP Morgan was responsible for causing, according to researchers from the University of Oxford.
Cuts to the UK’s National Health Service is predicted to have caused 30,000 deaths.
The banks and financial services firms are complicit in each and every one of these deaths. JP Morgan and its other financial partners helped wield the scythe. Taking the high moral ground now, because of a digital currency it cannot control, is hubris to say the least.
“The only good argument I’’e ever heard … is that if you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea.. or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off dealing in BitCoin than in US dollars, you are better off bypassing the system of your country even if what I just said is true.”
Drug dealers use cash too. Should we get rid of money altogether then?
JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and company didn’t even need cash to commit frauds of a scale so massive it caused the biggest financial meltdown since 1929. They had computers for that. No one has gone to jail for these crimes, but should we ban computers anyway, while we’re at it?
Jackson Palmer, founder of the open-source, peer-to-peer crypto-currency, Dogecoin, told Renegade Inc that while there are legitimate use cases for blockchain and digital currency technology, the world is many years away from having a viable alternative to even basic payment networks like Square, Venmo or Facebook’s built-in money sending feature.
“Because of the high barrier of entry in understanding how this technology all works, the industry has recently been overrun by charming sociopaths who can tell a really good, buzzword-laden story and attract a lot of ‘dumb money’, as I like to call it,” he said.
“This money is coming in from investors who don’t understand the technology or its current limitations, but fear they’ll miss out if they don’t blindly participate at this very second – due to the recent price increases.”
To make matters worse, many of these “investors” are not experienced in investing in companies as the crypto investment space is almost entirely unregulated. So you have thousands of average people throwing money they likely can’t afford to lose at something they believe will get them rich, quick.
“It’s a recipe for disaster and there’s sadly no telling how long it might go on,” Palmer said. “It could be months or years before the bubble finally pops. I think everyone needs to take a step back and reassess how far the technology has actually progressed.
“Most technical people in the field will willingly tell you that this is beta software which doesn’t yet scale, but because these people aren’t especially talented in marketing or amplifying their voices, those sociopathic multi-level marketing types are drowning out the very valid warnings of this tech being a good three-to-five years away from being ready for the primetime.”
We don’t know who created it, it has no central oversight, it can be mined, it is neither anonymous, nor secure, and though it has been regulated in some countries, it barely has a legal structure to rely on.
BitCoin is not anonymous, it is pseudonymous. Just because you can hide behind a screen name, don’t think for one second your transactions can’t be tracked. BlockChain is the world’s longest receipt. It is probably more traceable than physical cash. It is likely the last technology in the world drug-dealers would want to use.
The way to obtain BitCoin is to mine for it. That is, use an awful lot of computing power to solve complex equations which, when solved, rewards you by releasing a block of the digital currency into your digital wallet or hard-drive. It is simply too technologically complicated to be worth most people’s time.
Like we don’t already spend enough time protecting our bank accounts from hackers, thieves, skimmers and scammers, now we have to worry that our wealth could disappear overnight because someone got a hold of an algorithm that works faster and better than ours?
Regardless, Dilon and his JP Morgan colleagues have spent the better part of three decades (longer even) defrauding the public with little – if any – accountability, while trying to prevent the development of cryptocurrencies that threaten their dominance over the financial system.
He and his colleagues have reaped as many millions as any drug dealer – more even – and has been central in the economic crisis plaguing countries like Greece, Venezuela and Ecuador. And he didn’t need a cryptocurrency to do it.
That said, while BitCoin and other developing digital currencies like Ethereum have been developing to provide more transparency, accountability and regulatory controls, Dilon and JP Morgan Chase was trying to patent its own currency ‘Quorum’ which provides less accountability and transparency while creating the potential for even further control over the global economy.
What we need is for governments to recognise publicly their ability to create money out of thin air and build economies of scale that suit the needs of the citizens they represent and increase or decrease taxation accordingly.
You don’t have to tax the rich to pay for the poor. You could cut taxes across the board and the economy would still improve.
The wealth of the economy is, funnily enough, relative to the amount of dollars in circulation.
The ability to issue currency is alone the greatest tool governments have against insolvency.
A healthy economy is one where governments spend and tax in correct measure, so that people can work and earn a wage that supports the cost of living, and keep consumer confidence at a balanced high.
Inflation is being used to justify the continuation of the status-quo, where the working poor and the unemployed are deliberately kept out of reach of employment, creating a buffer stock against wage demands.
BitCoin won’t solve any of these problems. It will likely only make them worse.
With workers pushed to breaking point, is it now time to call time on predatory business models?
Both COVID-19 and the climate crisis are being used as camouflage for central bankers to throw more printed money into a broken system.
With proper access to land denied to the vast majority, is it now time to reclassify trespass as a revolutionary act?
