JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to allow institutional clients to use their holdings of Bitcoin and Ether as collateral for loans by the end of the year in a significant deepening of Wall Street’s crypto integration.
The program, offered globally, will rely on a third-party custodian to safeguard the pledged tokens, according to people familiar with the matter. It builds on JPMorgan’s earlier move to accept crypto-linked ETFs as collateral.
A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment.
The expansion underscores how quickly crypto is being pulled into the financial system’s core plumbing. With Bitcoin rallying this year and the Trump administration rolling back regulatory hurdles, major banks are starting to bring digital assets deeper into the lending system.
For JPMorgan, it’s both a symbolic shift and a functional one: the bank whose chief executive, Jamie Dimon, earlier dismissed Bitcoin as a “hyped-up fraud” or a “pet rock” is no longer treating crypto as a fringe bet. Instead, it will be pledged as security for a loan, the same way stocks, bonds, gold and other familiar assets are.
Ending the federal reserve has been Peter Thiel’s wet dream for a very long time. It’s also coincidentally become one he shares with Thomas Massie and Mike Lee.
Trump and all these rich fuckers are investing large sums of money in crypto. Depending on how big the next big financial collapse is, they might just all be willing to hop on board with Thiel and Massie and say fuck it. Who needs the federal reserve anyway? (Other than all the suckers who aren’t part of club Oligarch, but who gives a fuck about them?)