JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon has admitted “regrets” to his now infamous remark from last year when the Wall Street banker called bitcoin a “fraud”.

It was in September 2017 and a banking conference when Dimon called bitcoin a “fraud” that was “worse than tulip bulbs”. A longstanding critic, Dimon also threatened to fire employees trading bitcoin.

Now, the high-profile Wall Street figure has backpedaled on those remarks and softening his stance in a televised interview with FOX Business Network, stating “I regret making them.”

He stated:

“The bitcoin to me was always what the governments are gonna feel about bitcoin as it gets really big, and I just have a different opinion than other people. I’m not interested that much in the subject at all.”

Dimon went on to separate bitcoin from blockchain technology, as he has done for several years now.

“The blockchain is real. You can have crypto yen and dollars and stuff like that. ICO’s you have to look at individually,” he stated. Fuelled by cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Ethereum’s ether, initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a radical new form fundraising that has proven both proven controversial and successful.

Dimon has long stuck with his dismissive stance on bitcoin. “Bitcoin is like 2 billion dollars or 3 billion dollars,” he said of the cryptocurrency’s market cap belittlingly in 2015. “We (JP Morgan) move 6 trillion, a day. So you’ve got to (put it in perspective,” Dimon claimed, adding that bitcoin was going “nowhere.” Two years later, bitcoin had surpassed the market valuation of JPMorgan Chase, albeit briefly, and the entire cryptocurrency market cap is now is now three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

Featured image from Flickr/FORTUNE Global Forum.