JPMorgan Says JPM Coin Now Handles $1 Billion Transactions Daily (bloomberg.com) 97
JPMorgan Chase's digital token JPM Coin now handles $1 billion worth of transactions daily and the bank plans to continue widening its usage, Global Head of Payments Takis Georgakopoulos said. From a report: "JPM Coin gets transacted on a daily basis mostly in US dollars, but we again intend to continue to expand that," Georgakopoulos said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. JPM Coin enables wholesale clients to make dollar and euro-denominated payments through a private blockchain network. It's one of the few examples of a live blockchain application by a large bank, but remains a small fraction of the $10 trillion in US dollar transactions moved by JPMorgan on a daily basis. The company also runs a blockchain-based repo application, and is exploring a digital deposit token to accelerate cross-border settlements.
No one has ever explained to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
why I (as a non-criminal) should use digital coins instead of the bog-standard digital dollars we all currently use every day via credit and debit cards, ACH and Direct Deposit, etc.
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Follow-up: no one has every given me a valid explanation as to why digital coins are better than current digital money.
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I wonder if you have ever considered the level of privilege you enjoy that you don't have to concern yourself with these issues.
All of the things you mention necessarily depend on access to a bank account and each of them has chargeback and censorship risk. None of them provides the privacy and anonymity of cash.
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The Feds laugh at BTC anonymity. Why should any other digital coin be different?
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The Feds laugh at BTC anonymity. Why should any other digital coin be different?
Is that why FinCEN is trying to pass rules that prevent the use of coinjoining?
Would you like to have a rational conversation about this or are you so committed to your priors that you cannot consider the arguments?
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One could assume regulation centers around both it's applications for both money laundering in criminals enterprises as well as it's potential use for tax evasion.
Of course it may very well be maintaining the ability for the government to track transactions but unless the other 2 use cases or proven to not be a concern that's just gonna get baked into their calculus on regulation.
Unfortunately digital coins have really had their most successful use in laundering and illicit trades and very little practical
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Unfortunately digital coins have really had their most successful use in laundering and illicit trades and very little practical use for the average citizen. It seems most usage is by criminals and then speculators who are using it as a type of speculative investment vehicle.
This claim is entirely unsubstantiated. There are illicit uses of digital coins, but it could just as easily be stated that, "Cash has had its most successful use in laundering and illicit trade. It seems most usage is by criminals." Are you advocating for the elimination of cash for the purpose of controlling its illicit use?
As for the speculative aspect, who cares? Let people speculate. What business is it of yours?
My bank account and credit cards do carry a "censorship risk" I suppose although I have never experienced that and those financial institutions also offer me certain legal and financial protections, things I would not receive in a digital coin. The risk on chargeback is on the vendors, not myself as a consumer, the chargeback ability for myself is a total plus, it offers me peace of mind and protection on purchases I make.
I know it's wasteful, but when the national lotteries have those big jackpots, I like to b
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Cash and "regular digital money" are used for criminals; digital coins are used by criminals... what benefit do digital coins give us over cash and "regular digital money"?
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what benefit do digital coins give us over cash and "regular digital money"?
I can make online transactions with bitcoin virtually instantaneously with immediate final settlement. That cannot be done with cash or "regular digital money."
I can walk across a border between political jurisdictions with all of my wealth stored in my head. That can't be done with cash or "regular digital money."
I can make online transactions for things that are blocked for ideological or political reasons with bitcoin. That can't be done with cash and the "regular digital money" is the source of the po
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Sounds great, but far from good enough compared to all the effing chaos and corruption involved with BTC.
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I can make online transactions with bitcoin virtually instantaneously with immediate final settlement. That cannot be done with cash or "regular digital money."
Huh? Why is "immediate final settlement" important because digital transactions are also instant.
I can walk across a border between political jurisdictions with all of my wealth stored in my head.
Sure, i suppose, why is this important to me or joe average citizen versus just having his credit card or apple pay or bank account?
I can make online transactions for things that are blocked for ideological or political reasons with bitcoin.
Your examples have been gambling, pornography and firearms. Do you have a more relatable example?
can avoid credit card processing fees for things I buy online using bitcoin.
Is BTC free from transaction fees now?
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A BACS payment takes me about 3 seconds.
I can carry a debit card or Apple Pay card across a border just as easily as a crypto wallet.
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Current average bitcoin confirmation time is 167 minutes.
How's that for instant!
Average transaction fee is $2.319USD, how's that for avoiding processing fees?
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I can make online transactions with bitcoin virtually instantaneously with immediate final settlement. That cannot be done with cash or "regular digital money."
Huh? Why is "immediate final settlement" important because digital transactions are also instant.
Digital transactions are instantly acknowledged in the payment network (i.e., Visa or Mastercard), but as a merchant, I am not guaranteed to receive the funds to my account until they clear the hurdles of the traditional banking system. This is why many merchants accepting bitcoin discount such payments.
I can walk across a border between political jurisdictions with all of my wealth stored in my head.
Sure, i suppose, why is this important to me or joe average citizen versus just having his credit card or apple pay or bank account?
If you are crossing into territory where your credit card, apple pay, or bank account are not accepted or valid, you won't have access to those things when you arrive.
I can make online transactions for things that are blocked for ideological or political reasons with bitcoin.
Your examples have been gambling, pornography and firearms. Do you have a more relatable example?
Contributions to political causes are al
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but as a merchant, I am not guaranteed to receive the funds to my account until they clear the hurdles of the traditional banking system
Ok, that's a nice touch but those transactions will still have to hit the traditional system regardless so it will have to wait through whatever exchange we are turning those coins into state currency. In a world where digital coins are the norm that works out but that's an upending of the entire financial system for, fast payments? Also most businesses aren't relying on immediate funds from every transaction (or shouldn't be). This is a very marginal improvement and BTC transactions are hardly instant (L
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The only time I can find this happening in America was right after Jan6 because it was possible those transactions were related to something illegal.
The bitcoin network is much larger than America. For example, think of the Canadian trucker protest. Also Cubans, Venezuelans, and others dealing with double- or triple-digit inflation trying to recieve remittances from their diaspora.
the LN is still under development
That's what a lot of people said about the world wide web, Linux, etc, etc. Rome was not built in a day.
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I am not familiar with Canadian law so I am sticking with America here, but outside of those protests has Canada done that type of action before?
Places like Cuba and Venezuela their problems are not solved by the financial system, those problems are symptomatic of much larger systemic issues. It's not the issue that the government has the capability to restrict such things but the fact they have a government who chooses to do so, the same type of leaders who would quickly try to squash these other networks
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lets think about how the use cases, development and thusly adoption rates for both of those in their first 10 years and in 10 years of blockchain and billions of dollars of investment from firms large to small at 10 years later what do we have, just more crypto coins.
Bitcoin alone has achieved a market value of over $650 billion as of now. I really don't care about any of the other centralized affinity scams that the Silicon Valley VCs with cheap money failed to make into a success. It is bitcoin that is being used in third world countries from Venezuela and Cuba to several countries in Africa and the Middle East to build the future of the world wide open source payments network. It's also being used in America and the rest of the first world to allow anyone who cares t
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And how much of that $650B and it's associated infrastructure and developers are centralized in those 3rd world countries? If it's so great why is it's largest use case with everything going in it's favor (lightning network included) in El Salvador now either considered a failure or on it's way to being a failure for those very people?
without the control of government bureaucrats.
The vast majority of people would rather maintain their ability to chargeback, decades of legal precedent and protections, FDIC protections and hundreds of other inherent adv
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If it's so great why is it's largest use case with everything going in it's favor (lightning network included) in El Salvador now either considered a failure or on it's way to being a failure for those very people?
You should not believe everything you read on the Internet. Most people who are feeding you this misinformation are strongly incentivized to make you believe things are going much worse than they are.
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Oh no, I'd better cancel my trip to a third world country.
You know, where internet access is temperamental. Quite a problem with bitcoin transactions if you have no internet access.
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Didn't Venezuela ban crypto mining this year?
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Current average bitcoin confirmation time is 167 minutes.
WTF are you talking about? The network always adjusts to target 10 minute average block times. Some blocks go longer, some go shorter, but the average time across all of the blocks in a difficulty adjustment period of 2016 blocks is always about 10 minutes +/- a few percent depending on the hash rate of the mining network.
Average transaction fee is $2.319USD, how's that for avoiding processing fees?
This is just your retardation on display. In order to get into the next block, you have to pay a priority fee. That fee is currently around $0.63, but it can rise under high demand. That i
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https://ycharts.com/indicators... [ycharts.com].
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Because you just said
The bitcoin network is much larger than America. For example, think of the Canadian trucker protest. Also Cubans, Venezuelans, and others dealing with double- or triple-digit inflation trying to recieve remittances from their diaspora.
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Try buying something in Gaza right now with Bitcoin.
Most people there don't have internet right now.
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what benefit do digital coins give us over cash and "regular digital money"?
Why you want to couple cash and "regular digital money" together, when digital coins are providing the same benefits that outgoing cash (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41095004) is doing? Wouldn't it be good to have some option when cash isn't around anymore?
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Eyeroll. Not just "eyeroll", but "stop reading Ayn Rand" eyeroll.
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Well, I am in Europe so I am not reading too much what Rand says there, but the US is behind the Europe on this matter.
Please read this (https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/going-cashless-can-learn-swedens-experience/) instead of rolling eyes. :)
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Cash has had its most successful use in laundering and illicit trade. It seems most usage is by criminals."
Except in this case "cash" means all forms of fiat currency, USD, EU, Yen, etc. We already know that accounts for 99.9% of all transactions and yes, criminal transactions as well. I don't need to substantiate that point, it's the status quo. I would ask you how much digital coins are used for non-investment, non-speculative cases. What percentage of BTC or crypto transactions are product for coins? Should be easy to know.
As for the speculative aspect, who cares? Let people speculate. What business is it of yours?
I don't care but it just is a furthering of my case that these digital products are
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There are still lots of uses of cash around the world by consumers, it's not all digital and not all criminal. For smaller purchases it is convenient. Most bank branches have an ATM outside, many grocery stores also. Debit and credit cards come with their own problems. And while some may say cash is only used in backwards USA, I see cash being used even in Europe where the kids routinely mock someone who has physical currency.
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Rational discussion requires rational arguments. So far, that's been woefully lacking on the pro-DC side.
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You mean the same reason traditional money laundering is illegal?
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For the consumer, chargeback is a good thing.
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It's good knowing if I buy something online with my credit card, I can get my money back if it never turns up.
Impossible with bitcoin.
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How long does it take ACH transaction compared to digital currency?
Not so long that it bothers me.
How much does it cost to send 1 million dollars to another country via traditional means vs digital currency?
Honest people who care might know. I don't know nor care.
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Some digital coins like the Chinese issued Digital Renminbi (which is not blockchain based) enables electronic offline transactions. These capabilities are built into popular apps like WeChat, so no cards required.
As far as capabilities that go above and beyond what credit cards provide, this is really the only one that I can think of. And card companies could make this happen easily enough.
IMHO money is not the best use case for distributed ledger systems, but there are some for smart contracts.
Re: No one has ever explained to me... (Score:3)
One really good reason is because you are transacting with someone who doesn't have easy or cheap access to the American banking system. In many countries it is very difficult or very expensive to interact with those systems. Digital coins (good ones at least) operate more like cash or bearer bonds. As long as Internet is available, you can transfer them to anyone in the world with little to no fees.
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Easy and cheap access to the international banking system is a solvable problem.
No digital coins required. Unless you're a criminal...
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bankers are criminals too, err i mean criminals are bankers too, oops what i really mean is digital coins currently bypass some checks that "cash" has to go through.
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The Feds regularly track digital coin transactions.
Re: No one has ever explained to me... (Score:4, Informative)
This statement contains assumptions.
The obvious example that comes to mind is in Nigeria and Kenya where the banking system and currency are broken enough that prepaid cell-phone minutes are a de facto currency.
"... but not in America, right?!"
I love my country, but we have issues. Our police have the power to rob normal citizens or even armored cars legally and keep 80% of the money. [forbes.com] Within my lifetime I've also seen them put a banking blockade against Wikileaks [nonprofitquarterly.org] and separately attempt to cut off entire classes of businesses from banking services [wikipedia.org].
The world is a messy place.
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"Solveable" does not mean will solve.
And complaining about Civil Asset Forfeiture is completely off-topic to my question.
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And complaining about Civil Asset Forfeiture is completely off-topic to my question.
I think that it is good example why you "as a non criminal should use digital coins". It would give you more control to your assets. Of course, if you know all regulations by heart, it is not a issue for you, but for many (https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_customs-agency-cash-seizures-airports-cost-travelers-millions/6171058.html) it is.
Further.. in this chain there are also represented other valid cases why somebody else could/should use digital coins. If you agree with any of them (e.g. Hotak's case in thi
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Kenya has a very successful mobile payments network in the form of MPesa.
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MPesa is what I was referencing. Back to the early 00s there wasn't an effective money transfer system to service rural areas so people would purchase airtime cards, call and give the codes to their relatives. The relatives could trade or sell it. Then ?Vodaphone? made it possible to send minutes directly from one phone to another. MPesa was born when they partnered up with someone else to buy minutes back for local currency. It became a a fungible, durable, portable store of value, i.e. a currency.
Thi
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MPesa is NOT a blockchain. It's in most senses of the word, Safaricom and Vodafone are banks.
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People almost never use cryptocurrencies directly. They interact with apps, which rarely put every transaction on the blockchain - they just keep their own internal balances and settle every so often with the blockchain.
So explain exactly why cryptocurrencies need to be shoved into the app backend rather than literally any other means of payment processing?
Re: No one has ever explained to me... (Score:2)
That's like saying banks don't use clearing houses because they bundle the transactions nightly. They obviously DO use clearing houses. But they keep their own interday ledgers.
Has nothing to do with TFA (Score:5, Informative)
This coin is not a consumer-held coin. It says right there in TFS that this is operating on a private blockchain. That means you will never hold it, never see it, etc. JPM is testing out various strategies for doing large scale asset management over blockchains. The future there isn't current gen public chains, it's permissioned, private ledgers deployed between peers that ordinarily more or less trust each other. You will not hold coins on those. The blockchains will simply be a messaging system + system of record for value.
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Indeed, unlike other proofs, "Proof of Authority" is extremely fast and efficient. Just verification of a simple digital signature. No less efficient than, say, a SSL handshake.
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A ledger is a ledger; we've been internally sending money here and there using ledgers since the beginning of double-entry accounting 800 years ago.
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OTTOMH, faster transaction clearing times, avoiding SWIFT network fees, avoiding disclosing information to the Federal Reserve or NCHPA clearing houses, non-repudiation, and because it's cool.
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This is for wholesale payments between large suppliers, often international in nature. Think transactions in the millions of dollars.
The benefits of blockchain networks for transactions of this kind are multiple
- Instant remittance instead of having to deal with bank wires and settlement
- No transaction or network fees (or, at least, very low fees. I am sure JPM is not doing this as a charity)
- Entirely eliminating "middle parties" that act as brokerages in many of these transactions.
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That's a fancy General Ledger (which computers already know how to do). Why does a G/L run by a single company need a blockchain?
Re: No one has ever explained to me... (Score:2)
Because no one trusts JPM or anyone else to "own" the ledger. With a blockchain none of the parties "own" it, and thus no one has to trust if JPM or their employees is going to record the amounts improperly, or alter them, because it's impossible to do.
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Tens of millions of people and companies trust JPMorgan with trillions of dollars every year in JPM's G/L.
Re: No one has ever explained to me... (Score:2)
Look... you asked for the "why", I gave the why. I'm not here to sell you on anything, I honestly don't give a rats ass whatsoever.
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And it was a poor answer with a manifestly foolish response.
But why? (Score:5, Interesting)
If we're going to rely on JPMorgan moving coins, what problem does the blockchain solve here? May as well just ask them to handle your money in a way which has worked for them for 152 years now.
Re:But why? (Score:4, Informative)
...what problem does the blockchain solve here?
As opposed to a traditional scenario, JPMorgan completely bypasses SWIFT [wikipedia.org].
Re: But why? (Score:2)
You don't need a blockchain for that. A private blockchain is like paypal, or JPM branded casino chips. You can't exchange outside their system, but they definitely don't need blockchain to provide that.
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If that's true, that would be a good way to bypass sanctions on Russia. I wonder if anyone is investigating that potential.
Since this is a private blockchain... it's true in the sense that a private microwave link in your back yard "bypasses the internet" but also can't reach anyone else.
The next question, so can you do illegal stuff over it with whomever you manage to connect to, the answer is no, but yes, you always could, but it's not enabling it.
Banks can already privately connect to each other, you don't need blockchain to do it. What's the point in connecting to exactly one other bank though? You need a bunch of banks to
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If that's true, that would be a good way to bypass sanctions on Russia. I wonder if anyone is investigating that potential.
It's irrelevant. SWIFT is an inter-bank transfer system. Any multinational bank does *not* need to use SWIFT to transfer money between countries, and can do so without a blockchain.
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JPMorgan is multinational finance firm with $3.9tn in assets. They do not need to use SWIFT at all to transfer money between countries, they can handle the conversion internally just like any multinational bank.
And even if they weren't, you don't need a blockchain to bypass SWIFT. Or did you think we only invented the concept of transferring and converting money internationally in the late 70s?
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less dependent on changing currency values with transfers so helps business move transactional data compared to where they want the "cash" value out.
Re: But why? (Score:3)
You just added a third currency, A, JPMC, and B. You may as well be using Australian dollars.
It doesn't solve any of the currency pricing issues you had with A and B. Now you have three things varying with respect to each other. If you peg JPMC to A or B, back to two, but no improvement.
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less dependent on changing currency values with transfers so helps business move transactional data compared to where they want the "cash" value out.
No it's not. They aren't using the blockchain to store anything. In fact they are *more* dependent on currency values since the blockchain simply adds an extra step in the process making it more likely that the value changes before the transaction is complete.
In any case such changes in value are always fixed by the company offering the conversion services. Or do you think JP Morgan is using the blockchain so they can offer you currency conversion for free?
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If one wants to speculate on some future where everyone wants to use blockchain for everything for some reason, I'm sure that from JPMorgan's perspective, it solves the problem of not all transfers currently going through JPMorgan. ;)
JPMorgan doesn't control SWIFT. It does control JPM Coin.
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Good answer (mod parent up) (Score:2)
This is the only decent posted answer to the question of "why blockchain?".
To phrase it differently: JPMs other internal transfer protocols were presumably time-tested and reliable. Which also means slow. The inefficiencies of a blockchain ledger likely appear less serious in competition with all that crufty protocol.
This is a good way for JPM to gain experience in blockchain at low risk, while also exploring increasingly efficient internal t
Data Point and Opinion (Score:3)
JP Morgan has a history of poor ethical choices including market manipulation in currency and metals markets [bloomberg.com], hiding trader communications from regulators [cnbc.com], and deleting communications under subpeona [cnn.com].
For any other cryptocurrency endeavor these would be considered glaring red flags.
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For any other cryptocurrency endeavor these would be considered glaring red flags.
Actually for any other cryptocurrency endeavour they would barely meet the minimum requirements for corruption. Maybe if JP Morgan donated money to Hamas or laundered money for the mafia they would be able to play with the cool rough crypto boys, but right now they look like a well behaved catholic schoolboy in comparison.
Private currency (Score:2)
First, to avoid any knee-jerk reaction: note that this is not crypto.
This is simply a "private currency" (see the Wikepedia article, or any of zillion other articles). I assume the motivations for this coin are to circumvent the often onerous regulations of the US government, regarding US currency transactions. Trade monopoly money with the bank, and turn it into a fiat currency sometime later.
Purely coincidentally, using monopoly money also helps dodge monitoring that might identify avoid money launderin
Fake accounts (Score:2)
Volume is Meaningless (Score:1)
Every crypto at some point has had somebody set up a chain of wallets that just send to each other all day to artificially drive up volume.
Deriving an organic volume metric can be very hard to do so it's best to ignore volume whenever possible.
But of course... (Score:2)
JPMorgan, one the biggest fraudster on Wall Street [duckduckgo.com] is doing crypto. What a surprise...
Re:But of course... (Score:5, Informative)
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The thing that gets me with companies - be it a bank, big tech, chemical, pharm, agro... is that they get to be suit and fined over and over without end. If you or I were to do anything like what they're doing, we'd end up spending life behind bars after the 5th time.
We have to stop fining them - which is pointless because they simply factor the fines in their operating expenses - and start threatening the company officers to do hard time when the company they head misbehaves. I guarantee you they'd become
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We have to stop fining them - which is pointless because they simply factor the fines in their operating expenses - and start threatening the company officers to do hard time when the company they head misbehaves. I guarantee you they'd become virtuous in a hurry.
Don't forget these laws were written a century ago or even more. Update the fines to be proportional to the business size. Once these companies have to report a quarterly loss due to fines then things will change.
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Bailout (Score:2)
So will the feds pay any future JPM bailout in JPMcoin ?
Or maybe the feds should create a new type of currency that has a specific purpose of bailing out banks and that somehow gets automatically clawed back by the treasury after 5 years or so.
I could see some utility in special purpose currencies with characteristics the government controls, like aid money that can only be spent on food from specific outlets
Can you buy JPM coin? No. Can you sell JPM coin? (Score:2)
JPM Coin isn't a thing. It's a method the bank uses to transfer funds internally.
YOU and I CAN'T BUY or SELL JPM Coin. It's not a commodity. It's not a line item on a receipt. It's just NOT A THING.
How JPM Chase chooses to transfer money internally is their issue, and what they call it, and how cleverly pretend it's crypto means nothing.
It's just tricks on the books.
Fuck JPM Chase. The only good JPM Is Juan Pablo Montoya.
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I agree, Juan Pablo Montoya is a hell of a driver.
Newest trash coin (Score:2)
except peddled by a major bank.
What's next? JPM Ugly Banker Picture NFTs? (Score:2)
My investment in ugly monkeys was worth every penny as all my friends with bitcoins saw their investment go up in smoke.