Dimon Still Calls Bitcoin a Pet Rock as JPMorgan Widens Crypto Access
Jamie Dimon has not changed his mind about bitcoin. JPMorgan Chase has changed what it lets clients do with it. A social post circulating this week set the two facts side by side, pairing a photograph of the bank's chief executive with the line "who cares about bitcoin" and a list of his sharpest dismissals. The quotes in it are real. So is the distance between them and the bank's own product list.
Where the quotes come from
The post credits Dimon with calling bitcoin "worthless," a "fraud" and a "pet rock" that "does nothing." Each line traces to a separate appearance. He called it worthless at an Institute of International Finance conference on 11 October 2021, a remark CNBC, CNN and Fortune all carried that day; the backdrop in the post's photograph shows the same conference branding. The "fraud" line dates to September 2017, when he told a Barclays conference that bitcoin was "worse than tulip bulbs" and that "it won't end well." NBC News traced the "pet rock" phrasing to his Davos appearance in 2024, and a second outlet confirming that year did not turn up before publication.
The post also says Dimon links bitcoin to money laundering and sex trafficking. That is the author's characterization of remarks he made at a Senate hearing in late 2023, where he said the only true use case was "criminals, drug traffickers ... money laundering, tax avoidance." NBC News reported him naming sex trafficking and terrorism in the same stretch of testimony.
What the bank actually permits
At JPMorgan's investor day on 19 May 2025, Dimon said the bank would let clients buy bitcoin and would show it on their statements. It does not custody the coins. That distinction matters, because custody is where a bank takes responsibility for the private keys. He framed the decision as client choice, not endorsement.
"I don't think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke. I defend your right to buy bitcoin," Dimon said at the investor day, in remarks carried by CNBC and NBC News.
The offering has widened since. Crypto.news reported in August that JPMorgan opened a collateral program in March 2026 through Kinexys, its digital-assets platform, letting institutional clients pledge bitcoin and ether against dollar loans at haircuts of 30% to 50%. Fidelity Digital Assets and Coinbase Custody hold the pledged coins, that account said. No second outlet confirming the haircut range surfaced, so the figure stands single-sourced here.
Blockchain gets the endorsement bitcoin does not
The split is old and consistent. In his shareholder letter dated 7 April 2026, Dimon wrote that "a whole new set of competitors is emerging based on blockchain, which includes stablecoins, smart contracts and other forms of tokenization," and that JPMorgan needs "to roll out our own blockchain technology." In a CNBC interview reported at the end of July 2025 he had already called himself "a believer in stablecoins" and put the bank's crypto expansion down to demand: "It's what the customer wants, not what JPMorgan wants." The bank has since joined a shared tokenized-deposit network with Bank of America and Citi.
Two positions, no convergence
Nothing in the record shows the two lines moving toward each other. Dimon's personal verdict has been stable since 2017. The bank's offering has widened repeatedly since May 2025. Other firms have taken the same route, and one UK broker listed nine crypto exchange-traded notes for two million clients. The post that prompted this piece carries no date, and the account behind it aggregates business news instead of reporting it. Its claims hold up against the record. What is open is whether the chief executive's own verdict ever catches up with the bank he runs.
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