How JPMorgan Went From Bitcoin Hater to Power User

JPMorgan Chase (JPM +1.53%), the biggest bank in the US, has made a big turnaround on Bitcoin (BTC +1.21%) and crypto assets.

For years, its CEO, Jamie Dimon, remained one of crypto’s loudest critics, dismissing Bitcoin as fraud and predicting its eventual collapse. But the same institution is now rolling out sophisticated crypto-linked products.

JPMorgan is a global financial services firm with a legacy dating back over two centuries. It is the largest bank in the US by assets, with $4 trillion in assets as of 2025. With a market capitalization of $846 billion, the bank’s shares are trading at $308, up 28.34% YTD. It pays a dividend yield of 1.95%.

JPM is engaged in investment banking, commercial banking, asset management, financial services, and transaction processing. 

The bank primarily operates through three segments: Consumer & Community Banking (CCB), Commercial & Investment Banking (CIB), and Asset & Wealth Management (AWM). The products and services offered by JPMorgan include bank branches, ATMs, digital and telephone banking, lending, payments, market-making, financing, custody, brokerage, and securities.

Now, it is adding crypto to its products. This change in tune shows that the bank isn’t just observing the digital assets from a distance but actively working within them, in stark contrast to its CEO’s rhetoric.

How JPMorgan’s New IBIT Note Bets on Bitcoin’s Future Price

In late November 2025, JPMorgan filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a derivative-style investment that would allow investors to earn unlimited returns if the price of Bitcoin declines over the next year, before a sharp recovery in 2028.

The structured note essentially allows investors to bet on Bitcoin’s future price using IBIT, the most popular crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF), as the vehicle.

iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) is BlackRock’s (BLK +1%) Spot Bitcoin ETF, which holds nearly $70 billion in assets under management (AUM), making it the largest fund of its kind. The ETF made its debut in early 2024, along with 10 other such products that helped legitimize the cryptocurrency for wealthy investors.

These vehicles hold Bitcoin directly and allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin through a regulated market vehicle that traditional investors are already familiar with. Also, they provide intraday liquidity and clearer tax treatment.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin fund holds the top position among Bitcoin Spot ETFs, with $62.68 billion in total cumulative net inflows. No other fund comes close, with Fidelity’s FBTC at the 2nd position, capturing just under $12 billion, and then Bitwise’s BITB attracting $2.25 billion in net inflows.

IBIT allows investors to track the spot price of Bitcoin without owning the asset. 

JPMorgan’s new proposed notes are yet another example of a major Wall Street firm offering crypto-related investment opportunities that don’t require the investors, or in this case, the issuer, to actually hold any cryptocurrency. 

Now, the way this latest investment works is that the structured note sets a specific price level for the IBIT fund. 

Then, in about a year, if the fund trades at that price level or above, the notes will be automatically called, and the bank will pay participating investors a guaranteed minimum return of 16%. But if IBIT’s price is trading below the set price by the end of 2026, the notes won’t be called for the next two years, and investors can continue to maintain their exposure to potentially amplify their gains in 2028.

If IBIT surpasses the next price level set by JPMorgan by the end of 2028, the investors will then earn 1.5x on their original investment, with no cap on the upside. So, if BTC rallies strongly by 2028, investors can earn a hefty return.

The instrument also provides downside protection. According to the prospectus, investors receive their full principal back at maturity as long as IBIT’s final price in 2028 has not fallen more than 40% from its initial level (i.e., it stays at or above 60% of the starting price). If IBIT finishes below that 60% barrier, investors then participate one-for-one in the further downside and can lose a substantial portion, or all, of their principal.

JPMorgan clarifies in the prospectus that the notes aren’t bank deposits or insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It has also clearly specified the risky nature of the investment, noting that the instrument does not “guarantee any return of principal.”

The bank added:

“Investors should be willing to forgo interest payments and be willing to lose a significant portion or all of their principal amount at maturity.” 

In practice, JPMorgan’s structure offers the chance for investors to earn a fixed return if IBIT stays flat over a year and conditional downside protection of roughly 40% in the long term, via the 60% barrier level at maturity. Also, investing in the structured note, instead of the IBIT, gives a chance at a 1.5x upside.

The bank’s proposed structured note aligns with Bitcoin’s four-year cycle, making it an ideal option for those who believe in the cycle and/or follow it for their investments. 

Historically, this cycle involves Bitcoin experiencing a roughly 1-year bear market after the price peaks, as many believe October 6 was the case. The bear market typically occurs about 2 years after the halving event, and once BTC finds the bottom, the bull run follows in the halving year and the year after.

The most recent Bitcoin halving occurred in April, and the next one is scheduled for April 2028, which will bring down the block reward from 3.125 BTC to 1.56 BTC.

While interesting, JPM’s offering isn’t really novel, as Morgan Stanley (MS +1.52%) already offers a similar product linked to IBIT. The product has recorded $104 million in sales.

It offers exposure to Bitcoin’s price swings, “but within strict boundaries,” stated Bloomberg. The two-year notes from Morgan Stanley, which are “known as dual directional autocallable trigger plus,” promise higher returns not only if IBIT rises but even if it stays flat at maturity. Modest gains are assured if IBIT falls by less than 25%; beyond that, “investors take losses in full, with no cushion.”

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Bloomberg also noted in its report that these layered investments marked the end of “stagnation” in the US structured product industry after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The investment bank was a major issuer of such products, and its “demise wiped out billions of dollars worth of notes.”

Bitcoin was born out of the financial crisis that led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, which failed due to risky assets, high leverage, and complex financial products such as mortgage-backed securities.

Jamie Dimon’s War on Bitcoin

The latest development from JPMorgan Chase is yet another sign of Bitcoin’s increasing institutionalization, with big players seeking strategic bets to ride BTC’s roller-coaster trends. But more importantly, it marks a pivotal movement for the bank whose CEO has long been a Bitcoin critic, calling it a scam.

The first comments from Dimon came in September 2017 when he called Bitcoin a “fraud.”

“It’s just not a real thing, eventually it will be closed,” said the CEO eight years ago when the BTC price was trading around $4,100. He did mention the massive gains of the asset, which his daughter also bought. BTC “went up and now she thinks she’s a genius,” he said.

In a separate instance, Dimon called the Bitcoin mania “worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed.”

That’s not all. He went even further and warned that he’d “fire in a second” any JPMorgan trader who was trading the crypto asset because “It’s against our rules and they are stupid.” A month later, he said, “If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day.”

A few months later, in January 2018, Dimon shared his “regrets” about calling BTC a fraud and concern about “what the governments are going to feel about bitcoin when it gets really big.”

His main interest, however, is in blockchain, which he said is “real.”

By 2021, institutions became more active in crypto infrastructure, and JPMorgan itself continued its blockchain initiatives and published research on blockchain and crypto topics while Dimon remained publicly skeptical.

He called Bitcoin “worthless,” while the digital asset went on to make a new ATH.

“No matter what anyone thinks about it, (the) government is going to regulate it. They are going to regulate it for (anti-money laundering) purposes, for (Bank Secrecy Act) purposes, for tax,” Dimon said at the time.

It’s worth noting that JPMorgan Chase has paid billions of dollars in fines for its involvement in fraud, market manipulation, deficiencies in money laundering, and sanctions violations. 

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing in December 2023, he reiterated his stance, saying he has “always been deeply opposed” to crypto and that, “If I was the government, I’d close it down.”

Then, a month later, at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the head of the world’s largest bank by market cap said, “Bitcoin does nothing” and “This is the last time I’m talking about this with CNBC, so help me God.”

In May 2025, after the bank finally allowed its clients to buy Bitcoin, Dimon said his personal views on the cryptocurrency remained unchanged. “I don’t think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke,” Dimon said. “I defend your right to buy bitcoin.”

So, while his “personal advice would be don’t get involved… it’s a free country,” he added.

Throughout this time, Dimon praised blockchain, the underlying technology powering Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH +0.45%), and other cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is real and efficient, according to him. 

Talking about programmable blockchain like Ethereum, which allows developers to create and execute self-executing code through smart contracts, Dimon said, they “might actually do something.” These chains, he noted, can be used “to buy and sell real estate and move data — tokenizing things that you do something with,” unlike Bitcoin, “which does nothing.”

As for stablecoins, while he doesn’t get their appeal, Dimon noted that they can’t afford to stay on the sidelines. Over the last few months, he became a “believer in stablecoin.”

Most recently, Dimon said that blockchain will replace systems that are “clunky or late or not 24/7,” but it “won’t “replace everything.” Sometimes, it is also “a solution looking for a problem,” Dimon said.

Inside JPMorgan’s Crypto and Blockchain Infrastructure Buildout

While having a CEO who believes Bitcoin and crypto to be a scam and fraud at the helm, JPMorgan made several prominent developments.

This includes Quorum, an enterprise-grade, permissioned blockchain. In 2020, the enterprise variant of the Ethereum blockchain was acquired by ConsenSys, a blockchain technology company founded by ETH co-founder Joseph Lubin.

The bank also created a peer-to-peer network to share payment-related information and reduce cross-border friction. Originally launched as the Interbank Information Network (IIN), it was later rebranded as Liink, the world’s first bank-led network for data sharing between institutions and fintechs.

JPMorgan also introduced a digital token, JPM Coin, back in 2019 for institutional wholesale payments and settlement between its clients.

In 2020, as the bank used its digital currency commercially for the first time, it created a new business, Onyx, to house its blockchain and digital currency efforts. Late last year, JPM rebranded it to Kinexys.

Kinexys has been enjoying significant expansion, in alignment with the bank’s goal of making its blockchain network a core element of institutional settlement. It has processed more than $1.5 trillion in transaction volume since its inception and averages over $2 billion in daily transaction volume.

Furthermore, JPMorgan is among the 30 global banks participating in SWIFT’s initiative to create a shared digital ledger to facilitate real-time, cross-border payments.

While it started with blockchain, the bank has since expanded its services into crypto as well. 

In the first half of this year, JPM finally allowed its clients to purchase BTC. At the time, Dimon noted that while they’re “going to allow you to buy it,” the bank won’t hold it in custody but rather “put it in statements for clients.”

A digital dollar deposit token was also introduced on Base, an L2, by the largest US crypto exchange, Coinbase (COIN +4.27%), around this time. The J.P. Morgan Deposit Token (JPMD) “represents the first product to be offered by J.P. Morgan on public blockchain infrastructure, and will provide institutional clients a digital money alternative to stablecoins,” the bank noted.

In the second half of this year, JPMorgan and Coinbase signed a deal to allow the bank’s customers to link their bank accounts directly to their crypto wallets to make buying crypto quicker and easier and “take control of their financial futures.”

Starting next year, customers will also be able to transfer their points to their Coinbase account and “fund a crypto wallet.”

Around the same time, the Financial Times reported that the bank is exploring offering loans directly secured by clients’ crypto holdings sometime next year. And that they would also accept crypto ETF shares like IBIT as loan collateral.

Then just last month, Bloomberg reported that the multinational investment bank will allow its institutional clients worldwide to use both major crypto assets as loan collateral by the end of this year. To offer this service, it will rely on third-party custodians to securely hold the pledged cryptocurrencies. 

Now, JPMorgan has launched its own Bitcoin-related product, which shows that the bank simply can’t ignore the growing demand from institutional clients for crypto products. It is actually the strongest push from Wall Street to channel BTC exposure into a risk-defined product for wealthy clients.

Bitcoin as a Wall Street Macro Asset

So, it’s pretty clear that JPMorgan has been delving deeper into the cryptocurrency world while its leader remains skeptical, at least personally and publicly.

Interestingly, BlackRock’s Larry Fink shared Dimon’s views on Bitcoin, calling it an “index of money laundering” in 2017. “Bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world,” said the head of the largest asset management firm in the world. “That’s all it is.”

In a complete turnabout, BlackRock launched Bitcoin and Ethereum Spot ETFs, and now Fink believes BTC can replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency because of national debt and one day reach as high as $700,000.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan believes Bitcoin’s price could climb to $240,000 over the long term.

This latest prediction comes after BTC and the broader crypto market had a rough stretch these past two months. On Nov. 21, the price of Bitcoin fell under $81,000, a level last seen in April this year. Since this 35.7% drawdown from its peak, Bitcoin has recovered somewhat.

Trading around $91,500, BTC price is still down 1.58% YTD. The crypto king is also down 20% over the past month and 1.8% over the past year, while 27.6% off its all-time high (ATH) of $126,000.

But according to the bank, Bitcoin could easily more than double from its current price. 

Earlier this month, JPMorgan’s research team, led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, had set a target of about $170,000 for the next six to twelve months. At the time, BTC was trading just above $100K.

To arrive at this valuation, the analysts made a comparison (adjusted for volatility) between BTC and private-sector gold investments. As per their “mechanical exercise”, Bitcoin’s market cap would need to rise 67% to match the roughly $6.2 trillion in private-sector gold investment on a volatility-adjusted basis.

The report also noted that recent spikes in gold volatility have made the cryptocurrency more attractive on a risk-adjusted basis.

Gold is the world’s largest asset, boasting a market cap of over $29 trillion, while the total market cap of the crypto sector is $3.2 trillion. Currently trading at $4,195 per ounce, the bullion is up 5.37% in the past month and 57.82% in the past year.

With a market cap of $1.8 trillion, Bitcoin holds the 9th position among all assets, including public companies, precious metals, cryptos, and ETFs.

Over these last few months, Bitcoin has fallen under silver, which stands at the 6th spot with a $3 trillion market cap. Silver is up over 14% in the past month and 77.76% in the past year as it trades at $54.30. Ethereum, meanwhile, is the 40th-largest asset, with a market cap of $365 billion, as its price recovers to $3,025, down 9.82% YTD and 38.8% from its $4,945 peak.

Crypto, according to JPMorgan, is “moving away from resembling a venture capital style ecosystem to a typical tradable macro asset class supported by institutional liquidity rather than retail speculation.”

Retail participation in the industry has declined, and now institutional investors provide market depth, it said. “Cryptocurrency prices are now more influenced by broader economic trends rather than crypto’s predictable four-year halving cycle,” stated JPM, describing Bitcoin as a multi-year growth play.

What Jamie Dimon’s U-Turn Means for Bitcoin’s Future

Bitcoin is now becoming an institutional asset class as efforts like new blockchain initiatives, custody partnerships, crypto-collateralized loan programs, and protected-yield and leveraged-upside products gradually integrate the crypto asset deeper into global finance.

This shows that a new movement is underway. But while this institutionalization does not guarantee price stability, as we have seen this year, it does reduce friction for big-money allocators and enables larger flows of capital than prior cycles.

As banks and asset managers continue to build Bitcoin-related products, even while some leaders publicly distance themselves from the asset, the direction is clear: crypto is becoming part of the financial system’s core architecture, whether its critics like it or not.