JP Morgan is ‘looking into’ cryptocurrencies according to what company co-president Daniel Pinto told CNBC. Pinto expressed that the firm is not optimistic about cryptocurrencies and BTC in general, however, blockchain technology behind it requires attention as it will “play a key role” in the future of the current financial system:

“We are looking into that space. I have no doubt that in one way or another, the technology will play a role. Regarding bitcoin, you cannot have something where the business proposition is to be anonymous and to be the currency for unknown activities. That will have a very short life, because people will stop believing in it, or the regulators will kill it. I think the concept is valid, you have many central banks looking into. The tokenization of the economy, for me, is real. Cryptocurrencies are real but not in the current form.”

We all remember well when JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has called BTC a fraud and threatened his employees with firing them if they are caught trading cryptocurrencies, thus it wasn’t surprising that the company decided to stay away from any sort of crypto related business for a while. However, now it seems that after Wall Street rival Goldman Sachs has announced that it would begin Bitcoin futures trading for its clients by launching a crypto trading desk, JPMorgan must follow up with a strategy or they might get left behind.

Pinto expressed that there might be a chance that the company will begin creating BTC futures trading for its clients but the decision has not been made yet:

“If we need to clear futures of bitcoin, can we do it? Yes. Have we done it? No,” he said.

Jamie Dimon, current CEO of JP Morgan has been quiet lately and he hasn’t commented on his fellow executive announcements neither. Dimon, 62, is followed by Pinto in case of a retirement according to various rumors, however no information was released regarding his possible retirement plans.

Now we also know who will be the one responsible for the current advancements of the company: Oliver Harris, 29, has been running the bank’s “In Residence” fintech program for the last two years is now the newly appointed head of crypto-asset strategy and will navigate the company in this new technology focused industry according to BusinessInsider.

Harris will report to Umar Farooq, the head of blockchain initiatives, and will also lead the Quorom project that is an internal blockchain venture developed for the company.

All together these developments seem to support our idea that either you start experimenting with Digital Assets in regards to fintech or you will be left behind. Even though some institutions like to separate blockchain from the currency and the decentralization factor, we feel that this is a dead end that they will soon figure out as well.