US investment bank JPMorgan has allowed its financial advisors to give all its wealth-management clients access to cryptocurrency funds.
It is the first major US bank to take the step.
According to an internal memo, the company enabled its advisors to take orders to buy and sell five cryptocurrency products – four from Grayscale Investments and one from Osprey Funds, earlier this week.
Mary Callahan Erdoes, JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management’s CEO, admitted recently that the bank was still debating if cryptocurrencies were an asset class or not.
“A lot of our clients say that’s an asset class and I want to invest,” she said.
“Our job is to help them to put their money where they want to invest. It’s a very personal thing.
“We don’t have Bitcoin as an asset class per se, and time will tell whether it has a store of value. But the volatility that you see in it today, it just has to play itself out over time.”
The move marks a milestone in the bank’s approach to cryptocurrencies.
In 2017, CEO Jamie Dimon threatened to fire employees who traded Bitcoin. He has also labelled Bitcoin a “fraud” saying that “governments are going to crush it one day” and “if you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it”.
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