The remarks made by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon earlier this year have not been received well by the Bitcoin community. In fact, some of his own employees think he missed the ball completely. Bitcoin is now receiving some unexpected support from one fund manager in the United Arab Emirates. More specifically, the head of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company feels that one should be open-minded when it comes to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It’s a refreshing attitude, to say the very least.
Is Jamie Dimon Wrong After all?
It is no secret that a lot of bankers and other people in power have no love lost for Bitcoin. They will gladly tell the public to steer away from investments in cryptocurrency, all the while they are the ones getting in on the action. No one knows for sure whether or not JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon ever bought Bitcoin themselves, but it seems pretty safe to assume that is the case. Everyone in the world wants to make a quick buck, and the cryptocurrency market is the right place to be in this regard.
While Jamie Dimon may consider Bitcoin a fraud worse than tulip mania, there are plenty of people who disagree on this front. That’s not entirely surprising, even though the value of Bitcoin is still mainly speculative at this point in time. Then again, so are most other investments available in the world today. Those schemes advised by bankers in particular are always subject to massive market manipulation. The one difference is that Bitcoin is an open market which doesn’t require one to place trust in third parties per se.
Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the chief executive of an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign fund, isn’t a fan of Dimon’s statements. In fact, he claims everyone needs to keep an open mind toward Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies. Such an unexpected level of support comes at a rather interesting time for the cryptocurrency industry. With records being broken every single week, it is evident there is a genuine interest in this new form of money. Al Mubarak is still on the fence about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies himself, but he acknowledges there is no need to dismiss them outright.
Moreover, Al Mubarak disagrees with Jamie Dimon in several respects. First of all, the sovereign fund executive doesn’t consider Bitcoin a fraud at this point in time. It is a very different monetary unit than any we have seen so far, and an open-minded approach is more than warranted. There is no right or wrong opinion on Bitcoin right now, but one shouldn’t use terms like “fraud” and “bubble” lightly when there is no solid evidence to back up such sentiments.
As one would expect, Al Mubarak is a big fan of blockchain technology. This is on par with virtually everyone else in the financial sector these days. It is evident this technology will also help elevate Bitcoin to new levels, although it remains to be seen whether or not regulators will continue to oppose this market. Then again, regulatory decisions do not affect currencies such as Bitcoin itself, but only those companies seeking to convert said currencies to and from fiat money. Bitcoin itself can’t be regulated by any means, yet a lot of people still think governments can intervene in this regard.
In the end, the comments from Al Mubarak are pretty positive for cryptocurrency in general. He doesn’t openly condemn or advocate Bitcoin adoption or speculation whatsoever. People need to keep an open mind toward this new form of money, as one of them may eventually become the new global standard. Whether or not it will be Bitcoin or a cryptocurrency that is far more fungible remains to be determined. An interesting future lies ahead, no matter how one chooses to look at things in their current form.
