JP Morgan CEO Says Bitcoin ($BTC) is “Worthless,” Here’s Why he is Wrong Again

JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon is not a big Bitcoin fan and he has made it known over the years and his skepticism continues despite $BTC reaching new highs. Dimon is among the very few skeptics who have maintained his disliking towards $BTC throughout, first, he called it a bubble and predicted it would burst.  However, despite the growing popularity of BTC, Dimon remains aloof of its progress. Crypto proponents now believe no bull cycle is complete without China’s Ban and Dimon’s Bitcoin skeptism.

It's not a Bitcoin bull market without Jamie Dimon saying it's worthless.

— Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) October 11, 2021

In a recent virtual conference, the JP Morgan chief again reinstated his earlier stance on the top cryptocurrency and called it worthless, however, the reasons he gave to justify his belief only show that he understand little to nothing about Bitcoin.

“I personally think that bitcoin is worthless. I don’t think you should smoke cigarettes either. Our clients are adults. They disagree. If they want to have access to buy or sell bitcoin – we can’t custody it – but we can give them legitimate, as clean as possible access.”

Dimon said BTC’s value supposedly comes from its scarcity with only 21 million BTC to ever get minted, but what if someone manages to change the code to remove the 21 million limit. He was quoted saying,

“I’ll just challenge the group to one other thing: how do you know it ends at 21 million? You all read the algorithms? You guys all believe that? I don’t know, I’ve always been a skeptic of stuff like that.”

This is quite an old and redundant argument used by people who don’t understand how a decentralized Bitcoin network functions.

Here’s Why JP Morgan is Wrong Again

While the Bitcoin network is open source and decentralized, thus anyone can make changes to the source code, but for those changes to be widely accepted and become a part of the mainnet it has to be accepted by a majority. So even if I want to change the total supply of BTC to an infinite amount, it won’t be accepted unless the majority of miners or nodes accept the proposal.

Ari Paul, the co-founder of BlockTower has one of the better explanations in naysayers terms. He explained

“anyone can take Bitcoin’s code and change it however they like. It’s like changing the TCP/IP protocols or FTP protocol. You can change it on your personal computer, but then you’re on a different network than everyone else. Your change wouldn’t be noticed by anyone else.”

Most of my followers know the answer to this, but for anyone curious, here’s an honest, nuanced answer: /1 https://t.co/c55LXyvCLZ

— Ari Paul ⛓️ (@AriDavidPaul) October 11, 2021

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also took a dig at JP Morgan and said CEOs without a science and engineering background are going to be at a disadvantage.

CEOs without a science/engineering background are going to be at a disadvantage in the coming decades I think.

Honestly, probably politicians, journalists, and many roles. Software is eating the world, changing every industry.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) October 11, 2021