JPMorgan silently offers crypto investments despite its CEO anti-crypto attitude

As CNBC reported, global investment bank JPMorgan has silently begun giving its wealth management clients access to six cryptocurrency investment funds, despite Jamie Dimon, CEO, continually advising against investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

JPMorgan Chase is now offering six cryptocurrency investment funds to clients, says CNBC citing people with knowledge of the move. The bank’s financial advisors were allowed to begin Thursday placing private bank clients into a new Bitcoin fund. It was created by New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), which is a crypto subsidiary of Stone Ridge, a $10 billion alternative asset management firm.

Reportedly, this fund is almost identical to the one NYDIG offers to Morgan Stanley’s clients. Morgan Stanley began offering three crypto investment funds to clients early this year, including FS NYDIG Select Fund, Galaxy Bitcoin Fund LP, and the Galaxy Institutional Bitcoin Fund LP.

Earlier in July, JPMorgan has started to offer 5 cryptocurrency funds to all clients. Four of them are Grayscale Investments’ products: the Bitcoin Trust, Bitcoin Cash Trust, Ethereum Trust, and Ethereum Classic Trust. The fifth one is Bitcoin Trust, created by Osprey Funds.

CNBC sources speaking about the crypto investment offerings declined to be identified, referring to Jamie Dimon’s anti-crypto attitude, as the CEO of JPMorgan has been one of the most explicit critics of crypto. In September 2017, he called Bitcoin a fraud but later regretted this statement. When JPMorgan was preparing to offer crypto investment to clients, its CEO publicly advised people to stay away from cryptocurrency.

Claiming that he did not care about Bitcoin, Jamie Dimon agreed that clients are interested. Later in July, the bank stated that lots of clients see cryptocurrency as an asset class, and they want to invest in crypto.