JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon believes citizens should have every right to buy Bitcoin if they want to – even if it’s a haven for criminal activity.At the time, he argued that the digital currency’s primary use cases include drug trafficking, money laundering, tax avoidance, sex trafficking, and the like – a belief he continues to hold. “When governments look at all this stuff, why do they put up with it?” he asked again this week.
He isn’t alone in his views: many high-profile Democrat politicians including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler haveindicates that illicit crypto transaction volume took up 0.34% of all volume last year. Critics like former SEC enforcement leader John Reed StarkCEO Michael Saylor – one of the world’s largest owners of Bitcoin – claims most of the “anathema” surrounding Bitcoin surrounds its characterization as a currency, rather than property.
“It doesn’t have to be a currency,” Saylor said in an interview with CNBC on Monday. “Nobody’s trying to buy a cup of coffee with a fraction of their building on Fifth Avenue.”Since Dimon’s congressional testimony, a large share of Bitcoin trading activity has moved onto traditional rails via newly launched Bitcoin spot ETFs in the United States.