BREAKING: JP Morgan To Launch First Bank-backed Cryptocurrency

It is finally here: JP Morgan launches the first bank cryptocurrency to transform the payment business, CNBC reports. The engineers of the financial institution created JPM Coin, a digital token that is originally planned to be used for instant transactions. It will be launched in a test mode in the coming months. This is the first real-world use of a digital coin by a large American bank.

“So anything that currently exists in the world, as that moves onto the blockchain, this would be the payment leg for that transaction. The applications are frankly quite endless; anything where you have a distributed ledger which involves corporations or institutions can use this,"

— says Umar FAROOQ, head of head of JP Morgan's blockchain projects. He also added that the new instrument might have three areas for application:

• international payments for large corporate clients who are looking for faster solutions than those that are available today;
• transactions of securities — r the bank tested a similar function on the blockchain during last year;
• treasury services business to replace dollars corporations hold in subsidiaries across the world.

 

It is worth noting that JP Morgan previously imposed a ban on cryptocurrency purchases via bank accounts. Also, the company's CEO, Jamie DIMON, had severely condemned Bitcoin, but later changed his views on cryptocurrency.

Image courtesy of Yahoo Finance