First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, goes the saying.
JP Morgan (not Jamie Dimon)
Jamie Dimon is CEO of JP Morgan Chase, arguably the most important money center bank. He recently called Bitcoin a “fraud”.
It certainly is not a fraud. It is in fact a more advanced form of money our fiat currency; it is Money 3.0.
JP Morgan Chase, the combined bank, has been around since 1799 (Chase portion), over 200 years, and has a market cap of around $331 billion. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been around for less than 9 years and have a market cap of around $130 billion. That is over 1/2 of Visa’s market cap.
It would not be a surprise to see the total cryptocurrency market cap exceed that of JPM by the end of the decade.
Why did Jamie call Bitcoin a “fraud”? Because he knows he has to fight it. Cryptocurrency, or the Internet of Money as Andreas Antonopoulos likes to call it, is a steamroller that will severely disrupt banking as practiced today.
Who is really happy with their bank? You think it is your money you have in your bank, right? No, you have lent your money to the bank so they can lend it to others and make hefty profits on the spread. Why don’t you lend directly? You can use Bitcoin to do that, or dollars as well, through direct lending sites.
Try taking all of your savings and checking funds out of your bank tomorrow in cash. They probably won’t let you if you have more than $10,000. They have know-your-customer regulations and anti-money laundering regulations and many other restrictions. They don’t keep much cash on hand. You might hear “we can give you $2500 today, then come back next week”.
In his book Internet of Money, Antonopoulos tells a story about how he gave a talk at the Deutsche Bank. This is the equivalent of the Federal Reserve, for Germany, their national bank. He asked to be paid in Bitcoin; they couldn’t do it. Ok, could they send him dollars to his US bank. Okay SWIFT code, etc. Without going through all the gory details, the whole transaction took 16 days! His bank in the U.S. said, who is the Deutsche Bank?
You can easily transfer a few thousand dollars or more via Bitcoin in an hour or so. If you haven’t used Bitcoin yet, now is the time to learn about it, it will only grow in importance.
The real frauds here? JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon. They have paid over $30 billion in fines for multiple financial crimes since the Great Recession. Around 10% of their company market cap.
http://www.dividend.com/dividend-education/a-brief-history-of-jp-morgans-massive-fines-jpm/
Money or Debt 
Self-evident truth. I think the day of the ‘Bankster’ is coming to an end.
However, I also think we need an Ídiot’s guide to Bitcoin” How about it Stephen, How’s your writing muscle holding up?
Rafe
I’ve done a series of podcasts at OrionX.net/podcast, and will continue to write topically and more podcasts. I see a lot of intro material e.g. how to get a wallet type stuff https://idiotsguidetobitcoin.com
My interest is in the development of cryptocurrency economies and valuations. Considering a newsletter along those lines, is there a need for such in your opinion?
Regards,
Hi Stephen, Yes, I think that would cut it. Like me, I suspect lots of folk want to ‘dabble’, but with proliferation, and varification, there’s too much ‘bad press’ to get over to see the wood from the trees..
rafer