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.
Just my personal take: the thing about Bitcoin is not that the success is based on the soundness of crypto but instead it’s based in the non-soundness of our debt and fiat-based currency. It’s a sign of the times and a growing lack of faith in institutions.
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?)
From memory Bitcoin’s second major surge (from circa $100 to circa $5000) around 2011 to 2013 was during massive influx of Chinese buyers and miners. They were not buying because they don’t trust fiat-based currency or government debt / institutions - they were buying to hide their money from their govt for political reasons. They then move overseas and acces their ‘hidden’ funds.
In fact the biggest seizure of Bitcoin ever was a Chinese fraudster who had 61000 bitcoin (~$6.7b US), fled to the UK on fake documents and started buying property. She was just taken down recently.
Bitcoin’s success to now is a lot of factors but I think the main ones are a 1) idiots with high risk tolerance or low technical understanding, 2) criminals using it to hide/transfer funds and bribes, 3) tax/govt evasion (eg Chinese as above), 4) fomo. Way way down the list would be ‘people worried about fiat collapse’.
Chinese ‘goddess of wealth’ attested in worlds largest bitcoin seizure 2025/10/01: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0415kk3rzo