A week after Jamie Dimon made headlines by proclaiming Bitcoin a "fraud" and anyone who owns it as "stupid," the JPMorgan CEO faces a market abuse claim for "spreading false and misleading information" about bitcoin.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week, you will be well aware of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's panicked outburst with regard the 'fraud' that Bitcoin's 'tulip-like' bubble is. To paraphrase:

"It’s a fraud. It’s making stupid people, such as my daughter, feel like they’re geniuses. It’s going to get somebody killed. I’ll fire anyone who touches it."

Image courtesy of Cointelegraph

One week later, an algorithmic liquidity provider called Blockswater has filed a market abuse report against Jamie Dimon for "spreading false and misleading information" about bitcoin.

The firm filed the report with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority against JPMorgan Chase and Dimon, the company's chief executive. Blockswater said Dimon violated Article 12 of the European Union's Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) by declaring that cryptocurrency bitcoin was "a fraud".

The complaint said Dimon's statement negatively impacted "the cryptocurrency's price and reputation". It also said Dimon "knew, or ought to have known, that the information he disseminated was false and misleading". "Jamie Dimon's public assertions did not only affect the reputation of bitcoin, they harmed the interests of some of his own clients and many young businesses that are working hard to create a better financial system,” said Florian Schweitzer, managing partner at Blockswater.

Blockswater said JPMorgan traded bitcoin derivatives for their clients on Stockholm-based exchange Nasdaq Nordic before and after Dimon's statements (as we detailed here), which Schweitzer said "smells like market manipulation".

Blockswater works with blockchain-based assets based in London and Austria. Its full complaint is below: