JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has drawn a battle line in Washington: The Clarity Act, as written, is dead on arrival — and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is the enemy leading it.
At Fox Business interview On Friday, Dimon unpacked pending legislation related to the structure of the cryptocurrency market, calling it a threat to the financial system and a gift to an industry that wants the perks of banking without the responsibilities.
“It allows crypto companies to effectively pay interest on deposits — stablecoins or something like that — without the protection they should have,” Dimon said. “It has almost no legal protection.”
His basic argument is: If a cryptocurrency platform walks like a bank and talks like a bank, then it should be regulated like a bank. This means compliance with anti-money laundering, Bank Secrecy Act obligations, FDIC insurance, capital requirements, liquidity rules, and the full weight of financial oversight that traditional banks bear. In his view, the Clarity Act allows cryptocurrency companies to skip all of that.
At the heart of the dispute is the fight over stablecoin rewards. Banks say allowing cryptocurrency exchanges to pay customers in exchange for holding stablecoins would accelerate the flight of deposits from traditional institutions — a ticking clock on a business model that has defined American banking for a century.
Cryptocurrency proponents see such incentives as a natural evolution of payments infrastructure. The bill price is approaching, and neither party is backing down.
Dimon also pointed out the problem of combating money laundering with cross-border stablecoin payments.
He said: “The first may be legitimate, and the second may be a sex trafficker.” Once funds arrive in a digital wallet overseas, they can move to a third, or fourth wallet – without visibility or accountability. He said this is the unresolved risk hiding under the optimism about the utility of stablecoins.
Dimon: Coinbase CEO Armstrong is full of shit
But Damon reserved his finest words for Armstrong. He claimed that the Coinbase CEO is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Washington to push the legislation. “No one is going to bow down to this guy,” Damon said, calling Armstrong “full of shit.”
This wasn’t the first time—Damon He made similar statements At the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year.
JPMorgan is not alone. American Bankers Association, community banks, and credit unions They are lined up in opposition To the current form of the bill.
Damon made it clear that this is a battle, not a negotiation. “We will fight him,” he said. “If we lose, we lose. But it will be fought.”
