J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is back on frank form when it comes to crypto bill the Clarity Act, saying a proponent of the legislation—Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong—is “full of shit.”
Dimon, the leader of the largest bank in the U.S., was asked on Friday about the landmark bill that would establish a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. The crypto industry sees the bill as a good thing, offering predictable oversight and guardrails—as well as allowing crypto exchanges to offer interest-like payments on deposits.
Banks, subject to more established and rigorous scrutiny, warn the bill doesn’t do enough to protect consumers and also raises questions over where capital will be stored and and guaranteed if crypto exchanges like Coinbase are able to take deposits the way banks do.
Dimon made it clear he would fight the bill, which recently advanced through the Senate Banking Committee, and said he wasn’t afraid of its approval—rather he wanted competition to be equal.
“We’re not worried, we think it should just be fair,” Dimon told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. “If [Armstrong] takes deposits like a bank, he should have bank rules.”
Dimon went on to list those requirements: Social, litigation, liquidity, capital, legal, anti-money laundering, financial reporting, transparency, and so on: “If they want to be moving money around the world, on any basis, you should ask the question: ‘Can that be used illegitimately easily?’ And the answer would be yes, unless they follow the same rules.”
Coinbase CEO Armstrong suggested the bill will benefit American consumers by making “the U.S. financial system faster, cheaper, and more accessible.” In a post on X, the crypto boss added that the act will also ensure the U.S. is at the forefront of building the next generation of financial systems.
The act has also garnered the support of White House advisors, as well as the likes of Senate Banking chairman Tim Scott, who said during a hearing for the bill that “developers, entrepreneurs and investors were left with uncertainty. They faced confusion and enforcement actions when, instead, the government should have been crafting clear rules of the road.”
However, Dimon suggested this wouldn’t ease the concerns of small banks and credit unions: “It’s not just the big guys,” he added. “We’ll fight it and if we lose, we lose, we’ll live. But it will be fought. No one’s gonna bow down to this guy or that company.”
When Bartiromo suggested that Armstrong’s view represented the crypto industry as a whole, Dimon replied, “He’s full of shit.”
Armstrong appears to be taking the criticism on the chin. After Dimon’s interview aired, he posted a doctored image on X, which shows him and Dimon in a ‘Heated Rivalry’ poster—a sports romance series that went viral earlier this year.
“At the end of the day, we all share the same goal: improving the financial lives of Americans,” Coinbase’s Chief Policy Officer, Faryar Shirzad, told Fortune. “Millions of Americans believe this includes preserving rewards programs and passing clear rules that protect consumers while keeping America at the forefront of financial innovation. It’s time for the Senate to bring the CLARITY Act to the floor.”
Wider opportunities
While Dimon has never been a fan of some cryptocurrencies (he famously referred to Bitcoin as a “pet rock”), that doesn’t mean he, or J.P. Morgan, are blind to the opportunity emerging from technologies like blockchain and stablecoins.
He highlighted the work of competitors like Stripe, Revolut, and PayPal, saying: “These are smart people trying to take a slice of your business … I tell my own people: ‘Open your eyes, look what they did, we didn’t do it, and some we could have.'”
Stablecoins could have been one such technology, he added.
