On Wednesday, at the US Senate Banking Committee’s annual Wall Street oversight hearing, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called for the banning of all cryptocurrencies.
Dimon made the case that the “only true use case” for cryptocurrencies is criminal activities, from drug trafficking and money laundering to tax avoidance.
Dimon said, “I’ve always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc… If I was the government, I’d close it down.”
Dimon testified alongside sever other industry chiefs, such as Brian Moynihan, of Bank of America, who said the crypto-market must be forced to abide by the same anti-money laundering rules as traditional lending institutions.
The leader of the hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren, called for an updating of crypto-regulations by congress.
She said, “When it comes to banking policy, I am not usually holding hands with the CEOs of multibillion-dollar banks, but this is a matter of national security. Terrorists, drug traffickers and rogue nations should be barred from using crypto for their dangerous activities.”
Warren called on the banking executives to help pass the ‘Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2023,’ legislation which is designed to enhance banking laws to prevent crypto from being used for illegal activities.
There have been a raft of scandals emerging around the crypto industry lately, beginning with the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange in November of 2022, amid a spread of contagion from other crypto-lenders, who had invested the crypto assets of customers to other companies which began to fail as liquidity concerns became exacerbated by customers looking to withdraw their assets due to those concerns. As a result the industry has come under increasing scrutiny from US regulators and lawmakers, resulting in the conviction of FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried.
Then last month, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, Binance, entered into a settlement agreement with the US Justice Department, among other regulatory entities. The exchange agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines for a variety of violations, from money laundering to bank fraud, and its head, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to a number of violations, which could send him to prison for up to 18 months.
