Bitcoin’s Value Plummeting, CEO Of JP Morgan Chase Isn’t Surprised

On August 1st, when the hard fork that created Bitcoin Cash occurred on the blockchain responsible for the oldest cryptocurrency on the market, analysts expected the price of Bitcoin to experience a decline. Exactly the opposite happened. The price started to surge and in the middle of August the price saw new record highs becoming feverishly close to $5,000 USD.

It’s a different story in September. The price of bitcoin has dropped almost 35% in the course of a week and it wasn’t because of a major change on the blockchain, or a major financial crash of some sort in the financial sectors of the world. This decline is being reported, at least in part, simply because a banking big wig talked a bunch smack at a conference in New York.

JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon has officially become bitcoin’s #1 hater. Dimon condemned the digital currency at Barkclay’s conference earlier this week citing bitcoin, as fraudulent and saying things like “it wont end well” and talking about how its only fit for murderers and drug dealers. He even made an obscure reference to the 17th century tulip bulb financial bubble that popped and left people in financial ruin. Dimon said exactly, “”It’s worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed.” These are a curious batch of statements coming form the CEO of a company, which has invested in blockchain technology of their own in Quorum.

Immediately following Dimon’s scathing review of bitcoin, it’s price started to drop. 24 hours after the conference where Dimon spoke, the price of bitcoin had dropped nearly 22% down from almost $5,000 to around $3,800 but what else is at play here? Certainly this can’t all be fallout from 1 rich banker’s opinion.

Well, its not. There have been rumors circulating the cryptocurrency media sources about how China plans to make major changes to the crypto exchanges in their country since early September. Now, there have been reports that a Shanghai-based BTC exchange will effectively shut down all its domestically based trading operations by the end of September. As more support has been added to the rumors that China is gearing up for a total shut down of domestic BTC trading, there have been long liquidations in the markets amid those fears. While the drop did affect Bitcoin gambling sites as players saw a decrease in the value of their funds, there was no mass exodus from this market. Online casinos that accept Bitcoin did not experience any decrease in business due to the unexpected drop.

While the decline may have been started, in part, by Dimon’s rant on a cryptocurrency based on a technology that he uses in his own business (and has never received a government bailout) it certainly hasn’t come this far based solely on 1 man’s opinion. There are various explanations as to why bitcoin is dropping at the moment but even at its current value point, it’s still up 300% from the beginning of the year and its important to remember that all volatile commodities subject to public trading go through peaks and valleys.