Umar Farooq, head of digital assets at JPMorgan, states that most cryptocurrencies on the market are “garbage.” He also suggests that actual crypto use cases are yet to be fully revealed. Here are the comments from the JPMorgan executive…
JPMorgan draws attention to lack of use in cryptocurrencies
During a panel discussion in Singapore on August 29, Farooq noted that regulation has yet to catch up with the booming industry, which has prevented many traditional financial (TradFi) institutions from getting involved. He also noted that the utility is missing for most crypto assets, with the exception of a few. Farooq, who serves as the CEO of JPMorgan’s Blockchain unit Onyx Digital Assets (ODA), used the following statements:
“Most of the cryptos are actually still junk. I mean, apart from a few dozen tokens, everything mentioned is either noise or, frankly, just goofy. So in my mind, the use cases didn’t quite come up and the edit didn’t catch up. I think that’s why you see that the financial industry in general is growing a bit slow.
JPMorgan is warming up to the crypto space
The JPMorgan executive also argued that the industry is not mature enough to be used at scale to facilitate high-value “serious transactions” between TradFi institutions or to host products such as tokenized deposits, custody services. Instead, Farooq suggested crypto, Blockchain, and the broader Web3 movement. At this stage it primarily provides a vehicle for wild speculation. Farooq uses the following expressions:
You need all of these to mature to really be able to do something with them. Right now, we’re not there yet, on Web3 today, most of the money used in existing infrastructure is there for speculative investment.
As we reported on cryptocoin.com, although JPMorgan has become relatively crypto-friendly over the past few years, the banking giant is primarily focusing on Blockchain technology and how it can be used to privately develop TradFi services. In May, JPMorgan announced that it is experimenting with tokenized collateral payments via its own private blockchain. The test was conducted by the two entities Black Rock Inc. It took place when the money market handed over a tokenized representation of fund shares.