Bitcoin
Trump Nominates Bitcoin Critic and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary
Former US President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump has suggested JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as a possible choice for Treasury secretary, praising the influential Wall Street figure and noting Bitcoin skeptical in an interview published by Bloomberg Businessweek Tuesday.
“I have a lot of respect for Jamie Dimon,” Trump said. “He’s someone I would consider.”
Dimon was among 70 CEOs of major companies at a meeting in Washington, D.C., last month that Trump described as a “love fest.” During the chat hosted by the Business Roundtable lobbying group, Trump promised to cut the top marginal corporate tax rate to 20 percent, adding that 15 percent is his real goal later.
As Trump continues to court cryptocurrency votes on the campaign trail for November’s US presidential election, his admiration for Dimon highlights a well-established antagonist of the industry.
While powerful CEOs like BlackRock’s Larry Fink have approached Bitcoin as a “legitimate financial instrument”, Dimon’s criticisms have persisted over the years.
“If I were the government, I would shut it down,” Dimon he said of crypto during a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year. “I’ve always been against crypto, Bitcoin, etc.”
Responding to a question from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Dimon added that “the real use case for [crypto] are criminals, drug traffickers, money launderers, [and] tax evasion.”
After Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is currently fifth in line to succeed him as president. Responsible for creating and suggesting financial, economic and fiscal policies, the position would give Dimon authority over a wide range of issues.
Trump’s pick in 2016, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin once touted cryptocurrencies as “a matter of national security.” Speaking about the need to regulate digital asset service providers in 2019, he said: “We will not allow [them] to operate in the shadows.”
Dimon appeared to soften his stance on Bitcoin somewhat in March when he said he respects people’s right to hold the asset. Still, he said his advocacy of it was comparable to someone’s decision to “smoke a cigarette.”
During an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Dimon said he would never speak about Bitcoin again, calling it “shit.” Months later, he reiterated his position that Bitcoin is “a fraud” during an interview with BloombergEmily Chang.
Trump, meanwhile, has followed a similar path to BlackRock’s Fink. After saying that Bitcoin “looks like a scam“in 2021, the former president came out fighting for cryptocurrency, explosion the regulatory approach of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, accepting cryptocurrency donations and defending US Bitcoin Mining Industry.
Dimon has praised Trump himself. And after the failed assassination attempt on Trump by Thomas Matthew Cooks during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Dimon supposedly emphasized in an email sent to the entire company, saying that now is the time for unity, while also repudiating political violence.
“We must all stand firm and united against any acts of hate, intimidation or violence that seek to undermine our democracy or inflict harm,” he wrote, Quartz. “It is only through constructive dialogue that we can address our nation’s most difficult challenges.”
Edited by Andre Hayward