JP Morgan just gave a ringing endorsement to Ethereum – but the company’s CEO is not done trashing Bitcoin.
The financial giant is making strides with Quorum, which is the firm’s enterprise version of the Ethereum blockchain. As reported by The Australian Financial Review, Quorum will be used to essentially tokenize gold bars on the Ethereum network.
According to JP Morgan’s New York-based head of blockchain initiatives, Umar Farooq,
“There are people outside our firm using Quorum to tokenise gold, for instance. They wrap a gold bar into a tamper-proof case electronically tagged, and they can track the gold bar from the mine to end point – with the use case being, if you know it’s a socially responsible mine, someone will be willing to pay a higher spread on that gold versus if you don’t know where it comes from. Diamonds is another example.”
Farooq says Quorum is a flagship product for JP Morgan, and he isn’t shy about his affection for Ethereum.
“We are the only financial player that owns the entire stack, from the application to the protocol. We are big believers in Ethereum.”
Meanwhile, JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon continues to sing a much different tune on Bitcoin. According to The Next Web, Dimon was recently asked about his thoughts on Bitcoin.
“Asked if he has changed his mind about Bitcoin at the Axios Conference in LA, Dimon quashed earlier reports of softening the stance on Bitcoin.
‘I never changed what I said, I just regret having said that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to be the spokesperson against Bitcoin. I just don’t give a fuck, that’s the point.’
Dimon also stuck by the ‘blockchain, not Bitcoin’ proposition, that the entire banking industry espouses. ‘Blockchain is real, it’s a technology, but Bitcoin isn’t the same as a fiat currency.'”
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