Surprise, surprise: JPMorgan considers BTC futures trading

An outspoken critic isn’t stopping JPMorgan Chase from examining the merits of entering the BTC futures market, even if that critic is the U.S. banking giant’s highest executive.

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the global financial services firm is “considering whether to provide its clients access to CME’s [Chicago Mercantile Exchange] new [BTC] product through its futures-brokerage unit.”

The report comes on the heels of CME’s announcement that it will launch a BTC futures by the end of the year, although the plans are still subject to regulatory review. CME’s plan is to offer a cash-settled BTC futures contract based on the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), which the exchange launched in 2016 in partnership with digital trading platform Crypto Facilites.

Oh, the irony

It goes without saying that JPMorgan will be opposing head honcho Jamie Dimon if it pushes through with its reported plan. Dimon has been an outspoken nemesis of the cryptocurrency who predicted in 2015 that BTC wouldn’t survive. The JPMorgan chief executive also called BTC a “fraud” that will eventually “blow up,” warning traders not to trade the cryptocurrency or risk getting fired “in a second.”

“It’s against our rules and they are stupid,” Dimon said back in September.

The outspoken CEO may have been adamantly opposed to BTC, but he does believe in its underlying technology—blockchain. Dimon thinks blockchain can be useful in the future, although its mainstream application “won’t be overnight.”

If all goes to plan, JPMorgan may soon follow the footsteps of Goldman Sachs, which is also reportedly looking at introducing a trading operation involving the cryptocurrency in response to the increased interest among its clients, who are still keen on getting on the cryptocurrency trade. According to reports, Goldman is looking at building “a full-fledged team of traders and sales people” for its planned trading operation.

Note: Tokens in the SegWit chain are referred to as SegWit1X (BTC) and SegWit Gold (SWG) and are no longer Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is the only true Bitcoin as intended by the original Satoshi white paper. Bitcoin BCH is the only public block chain that offers safe and cheap microtransactions.