Umar Farooq – Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan’s digital asset unit Onyx – put his name next to those who believe the cryptocurrency industry is “here to stay.” He also opined that bitcoin has started evolving since it was “kind of rolling along slowly” during its first years of existence.
Crypto Nowadays Is Like Napster in The 90s
Speaking of cryptocurrencies and their merits, Mr. Farooq seems to have an entirely opposite opinion than Jamie Dimon – the Chief Executive Officer at JPMorgan & Chase. Unlike the CEO, the former thinks that digital assets are not a temporary trend that is going away. He is just not aware in what shape or form they will exist in the near future.
Farooq compared the current evolution of the space with the audio streaming service provider Napster. Many consider that the software, which was operating in the 90s, was the stepping stone for giant companies like Apple Music and Spotify:
“And then 20 years later, you have Apple Music and Spotify. I don’t think we would have gotten here without Napster. We are sitting in the Napster age. We just don’t know what Spotify looks like.”
Onyx’s Chief Executive touched upon bitcoin, too. In his view, the primary digital asset has been in a cognitive mode during its first 13 years of existence. However, the tides have turned recently, and now more people realize BTC’s merits:
“Bitcoin has been around for a little more than a decade now. The first few years was literally just, you know, kind of rolling along slowly, then things started to catch up.”
Umar Farooq, Source: Euromoney
JPM Coin’s Expansion
Nearly two years ago, the US multinational bank said it would roll out a digital payments system called JPM Coin, while the blockchain unit controlling the project is the aforementioned Onyx.
Last week, the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) successfully completed a test of JPMorgan’s digital currency. This was the first trial of its kind for the blockchain product in that part of the world.
The experiment involved two other entities: Manama-based Bank ABC and Aluminium Bahrain – the first aluminum smelter in the Middle East, more popular as Alba. The former successfully initiated real-time payments to the latter utilizing the JPM Coin.
Ali Mousa – CEO of JPMorgan Bahrein – said Onyx is “committed to spearheading the construction of the next generation of clearing and settlement infrastructure.” The trial’s success would be beneficial for JMP Coin’s further development in the future, he concluded.
The South Korean-Japanese video game publisher, Nexon, announced earlier today the purchase of 1,717 bitcoins. The company justified the $100 million buy by trying to protect its shareholders’ value. Although it was founded in Seoul, South Korea, in 1994, Nexon moved its headquarters to Minato City, Toky, in 2005. It’s one of the largest Asian-based…
TL;DR BTC has been hovering between $59,000 and $65,000 in the past several days, settling around $61,700. Optimistic forecasts suggest a potential rise to $74,000 due to technical patterns and recent halving effects. The legal conflict between Ripple and the SEC continues, focusing on whether XRP is an unregistered security. Solana’s SOL has climbed by
Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman nominee Koh Seung-beom opined that digital assets would not work successfully as financial instruments. He went further, stating they “could not function as a real currency.” Are Digital Assets Real Money? Koh Seung-beom – nominated by the Korean President to be the next Chairman of the FSC – expressed his…
Nearly three-thirds of the Singaporean population has already invested in cryptocurrencies, with males under 34 being the dominant part. Interestingly, though, ETH is the most popular digital asset among locals, with BTC, ADA, and BNB trailing behind it. Singaporeans Like Crypto By partnering with CoinMarketCap and Seedly, the US digital asset exchange Gemini surveyed over…
There’s no respite for BlockFi as the bankrupt crypto lender struggles to pay its creditors and customers. BlockFi has brought forward several proposals since sliding into bankruptcy last year owing to the market turmoil. However, FTX’s latest legal filing poses a hurdle for the now-defunct company as it accuses BlockFi of abusing the planning process.…
The events of the past days shook the DeFi space in a way that no other project did this year. The lead developer of the project dumped all of his token on the market, crashing SUSHI’s price by over 50%. After that, he transferred the control over the protocol to FTX’s CEO and the price…
[PRESS RELEASE – Montreal, Canada, September 12th, 2023] Octav, a DeFi labeling and tax reconciliation platform, raised a $2.65 million seed to help label the DeFi ecosystem and be the “Quickbooks of crypto.” “There hasn’t been a systematic way where the DeFi community can decipher all their transactions from block explorers and get their data
This week, we take a closer look at Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Polkadot, and Chainlink. Ethereum (ETH) Ethereum’s price action was rather tame this past week and only booked a 0.5% increase. This highlights that this cryptocurrency is in a consolidation period at around $1,600. The key resistance is found at $1,700, and the support is…
Launched just last week as a fork of Uniswap, SushiSwap has gained traction as the hottest thing in DeFi at the moment. It aimed to build on the popular token swapping protocol but offer a native token as a reward to liquidity providers. Uniswap only offers a 0.3% share of its trading fees to those…