The Australian Financial Review reports that JP Morgan has given Ethereum a solid thumbs up with its commitment to Quorum.
Described by JP Morgan as “an enterprise-focused version of Ethereum” Quorum continues to find favor with the bank, according to the head of blockchain initiatives. Umar Farooq has been praising its use for tokenizing gold bars in custody by other financial institutions, this despite frequent disparaging comments made by the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, about cryptocurrency’s flagship digital currency, Bitcoin. Farooq commented recently:
“There are people outside our firm using Quorum to tokenize gold, for instance. They wrap a gold bar into a tamper-proof case electronically tagged, and they can track the gold bar from the mine to endpoint – with the use case being, if you know it’s a socially responsible mine, someone will be willing to pay a higher spread on that gold versus if you don’t know where it comes from. Diamonds is another example … We are the only financial player that owns the entire stack, from the application to the protocol. We are big believers in Ethereum.”
Dimon still maintains that the emphasis in the financial sector should remain on the blockchain, rather than Bitcoin which he maintains, he has unintentionally become the spokesperson against, arguing, “I didn’t want to be the spokesperson against Bitcoin. I just don’t give a ….., that’s the point…Blockchain is real, it’s a technology, but Bitcoin isn’t the same as a fiat currency.”
The New York global banking giant is flexing its blockchain muscle to speed up international payments with its Interbank Information Network (IIN) launched in 2017. The Quorum-based blockchain has attracted the Union Bank of the Philippines as its first user. Among other banks on the network will be Australia’s ANZ, one of the country’s big four, and Japan’s second-largest bank by assets, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.
When it comes to cryptocurrency, JP Morgan appears to vacillate between rejection, tolerance or possible adoption, depending on the spokesperson at any given time, many of whom have now moved on, some to launch their own startups, such as Amber Baldet, the original face of the Quorum project.
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