Anatomy Of The Jamie Dimon Attack On Bitcoin

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, came out saying that bitcoin is “worse than tulip bulbs.” Dimon went on to declare he is for blockchain technology but he thinks that bitcoin is a fraud. He sustains that governments will eventually ban it and that there is no reason to use it unless you are in a place like Venezuela or North Korea. His comments are inaccurate and some might say outright egregious, but some enthusiasts out there are starting to push the notion that these comments were deliberate and calculated. For the sake of covering the reaction to these comments on social media, and analyzing the arguments of those who think this was calculated, we are going to call this the Jamie Dimon Attack. This is a type of attack that bitcoin is highly likely to survive.

Jamie Dimon Attack: Conspiracy Theory?

Bitcoin has been on a downturn lately, going deeper in the red as reports of a wholesale ban in China take over the internet. When Jamie Dimon declared that bitcoin is a fraud and later doubled down on his comments on a CNBC interview, it was only a matter of time until someone out there started correlating the comments with a deeper price dip. That is how the Jamie Dimon Attack was born, although at this point, it might have just been a coincidence. All those humoristic tweets and social media rants probably belong to the realm of bitcoin conspiracy theories.

Jamie Dimon Attack Serves to Buoy Daughter’s Investments

Like any bitcoin conspiracy theory, this one is full of interesting angles. Beyond the sustained drop in prices, when CNBC interviewed Dimon, he said that his daughter bought some coins and that she now thinks she is a genius because the price went up. That comment in particular sparked some speculation on social media – and it was the focus of the meme featured at the top of this post. People started asking themselves if this was a ploy to get some more bitcoin at a discount, which is a possibility, but it will be hard to prove, and irrelevant in the long term.

Anatomy of the Jamie Dimon Attack

Whether Jamie Dimon did this on purpose to drive the price down or it was just a coincidence, there are a few points that people should take into consideration. Bitcoin is at the pinnacle of the information economy. After all, what moves around from node to node, and all the private keys are basically little pieces of information. The value we place on them has to do more with the system as a whole, including blockchain technology. Nevertheless, the Jamie Dimon Attack exposes bitcoin’s ultimate vulnerability as a store of value as expressed by a fiat denominated price: the king of the information economy is vulnerable to misinformation, by way of its users.

The Jamie Dimon Attack, whether it comes from the CEO of one of the most powerful investment banks worldwide or it comes from people translating Chinese regulatory measures, yields the same result. The code is strong, the network is stronger now more than ever after the fork and SegWit implementation, and bitcoin has a proven track record of efficiency – the whole environmental angle notwithstanding – yet it’s price is still vulnerable to misinformation or FUD.

No Stopping This Train!

Therefore, users must always understand that the core value of bitcoin is still there and it is growing as more people adopt it. The price will always be vulnerable to a Jamie Dimon Attack, because the psyche of enough users can fall prey to misinformation, but the value of bitcoin is much more resilient than its price. Barring other factors, Jamie Dimon’s remarks are simply not true so they cannot affect the value of bitcoin even if they might have affected its price. People want bitcoin precisely because they want an alternative to the government controlled economy.

People remember the 2008 crash very well and there are enough out there who will use the only alternative they have to remain hedged against the excess that people like Jamie Dimon and all the accomplices within the system represent. Just as JP Morgan created its CLO index and is active in the market for toxic financial assets, even after the 2008 crash, bitcoin users will remain faithful to the tools that might help them save their assets when the next house of cards comes crumbling down. Wall Street, regulators, governments and credit rating agencies created the demand for bitcoin, now there is no Jamie Dimon Attack possible that can stop this train.

Click here to watch an excerpt from the CNBC interview with Jamie Dimon.