JPMorgan’s senior analyst John Normand has said ‘air miles’ are an appropriate description for Bitcoin.
A senior JPMorgan analyst has added fuel to the fire started by CEO Jamie Dimon by likening Bitcoin to “air miles.”
Speaking on a Bloomberg TV segment, John Normand, the firm’s head of FX, commodities and international rates research, said the analogy reflected the “good and bad intentions” Bitcoin users allegedly display.
“Maybe if you want to choose another analogy rather than ‘Ponzi,’ you can call it air miles,” he told host Tom Keene.
“There are lots of things that can be used to acquire goods and services, and in the same way that air miles can, this cryptocurrency can too. It just has the added dimension of being more globally accepted.”
In light of Dimon’s now-infamous “fraud” accusations on Bitcoin he made publicly late last month, Normand showed a keen interest in maintaining the overall skepticism of the virtual currency’s inherent legitimacy.
Keene mentioned both Dimon and the concept of Bitcoin being a “Ponzi scheme,” but indicated he could not conclude the latter description was correct as it “implies criminal activity within the currency upfront.”
“There are people using it for good intentions and people using it for malevolent intentions,” Normand commented in response.
The debate further widens the schism between the world’s financial giants on Bitcoin. JPMorgan has come out notably more negative on the virtual currency than Morgan Stanley and especially Goldman Sachs, CEO of which Lloyd Blankfein tweeted yesterday he was “still thinking” about Bitcoin’s merits.
