Old School View

We take a quick break from our regularly scheduled programming to share some recent comments that I have found particularly interesting from a senior director of Macroeconomic policy for JPM. In a recent event that I attended at JPM, I was fortunate to hear a number of keynote addresses from senior leaders. During one of these speeches, a question arose surrounding blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the overall effect of the JPM coin.

I was surprised by the openness of traditional finance professionals to blockchain and cryptocurrency. There is a reason that JPM has the largest balance sheet of any American investment bank. It is constantly forward thinking and has taken the most forward-looking approach to blockchain of any current finance institution.

Per day, JPM facilitates the largest gross transaction of value across any institution. Per day it handles $2 trillion dollars. The keynote speaker took his/her personal stance, not necessarily the firm stance, that digital assets will have some sort of role in the future. He admitted that cryptocurrency in its current state does not offer many practical uses. However, he sees great value in stablecoins because they are able to leverage the power of blockchain to offer a decentralized and immutable record to transact value, while not suffering the main drawback of cryptocurrencies: volatility.

JPM plans to further build out their Quorum blockchain platform that could provide synergies with the JPM stable coin. However, the speaker does not see blockchain as a large of a phenomenon as greater macroeconomics trends such as increasing student debt, monetary policy moves, an increasing US debt ceiling, and an artificially inflated Chinese economy. The openness of senior leaders at the world’s largest financial institutions is a strong indicator that blockchain has a future in shaping the global economy.