For the first time since August 22nd, the USD price of Bitcoin has dropped below $4000 – down over 20% from its record highs on September 1st.
Crackdowns by China (on ICOs and more recently confusion over Bitcoin exchanges) combined with JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon’s comments today saw selling pressure extend as China opened…
All but one of the top 15 cryptocurrencies are under pressure…
As we noted earlier, what is ironic is that this is not the first time Jamie Dimon has lashed out at bitcoin: the last time Dimon slammed bitcoin was November 2015, at the Fortune Global Forum in San Francisco. Here’s what he had to say when asked directly about it by an audience member:
“You’re wasting your time with Bitcoin! Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped,” said Dimon. “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.”
“Blockchain is like any other technology. If it is cheaper, effective, works, and secure, then we are going to use it. The technology will be used, and it could be used to transport currency, but it will be dollars, not bitcoins.”
Speaking to CNBC later in the day, Dimon said he’s skeptical governments will allow a currency to exist without state oversight: “Someone’s going to get killed and then the government’s going to come down,” he said. “You just saw in China, governments like to control their money supply.” And yet, despite said “killing” Bitcoin remained well above $4,000.
That said, Dimon conceded that he wouldn’t short bitcoin because there’s no telling how high it will go before it collapses, saying that it “could hit $100,000 before it drops.” The best argument Dimon has heard about owning bitcoin, is that it can be useful to people in places with no other options: “If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than U.S. dollars,” he said. “So there may be a market for that, but it’d be a limited market.”
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