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JPM Coin & Bitcoin

by Aleksandar SvetskiMarch 2nd, 2019

Too Long; Didn't Read

How a Potato is attempting to compete with a Tesla

People Mentioned

Companies Mentioned

Coin Mentioned

How a Potato is attempting to compete with a Tesla

Roughly accurate

In the game of “crypto”, there is lots of noise, sleight of hand, and lots of confusion. It makes for both opportunity & frustration, along with lots of …well: this kind of crap.

I wanted to take 5min and give my 2 cents on the JPM Coin news from 2weeks ago. I would’ve liked to have published this earlier, but I was busy.

I did rant on it during the following podcast (first 5min), so to know “how I really feel”, have a listen here:

Crypto Clothesline Podcast: Aleks Svetski

Now…I’ve not had time to do a real deep dive on this JPM coin thing (I’m busy building a real business), so I will caveat the below with: “I could be completely wrong in my assumptions”, but unless Dimon & Co have created an open, publicly owned monetary network that’s verifiably sound — which I’m going to go out on a limb on and say they haven’t — then comparing JPM Coin with Bitcoin, and even implying that they’re someone similar is about as accurate as comparing a Tesla (Bitcoin) with a Potato.

They’re not even in the same league.

So…because I have a big mouth, and I’d like to make useful the time I’m spending waiting for a flight that’s delayed — I shall lay out my thoughts on this below:

1. JPM Coin = Dimon’s desperate attempt to stay relevant

I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard“JP Morgan” released their own ‘coin’ on a ‘blockchain’.

Surely he’s got fingers in both pies..

Lol.

Reminds me of the “information superhighway” that the telcos used to discuss as the new communication network upon which we would all do video calls.

Their attempt at assuming what people wanted ensured that the internet; a network owned by the commons, that assumed nothing & provided data-packet routing services — wound up being where all the innovation happened.

What’s important to note is: because the Telcos couldn’t “own” the internet, and because they could only be on-ramp & off ramps to this new communications network, they tried to build their own.

The tried.And the failed. Royally.Communication has mostly been free, and as part of a free & open society is generally harder to control and spin a false narrative about.

Information, or data as we call it today, wanted to be free, and our hunger for it is boundless, as evidenced by the breadth of this thing we call the internet.

“Those who wanted to own & have the internet dependent on them, are now dependent on it”

And here we are almost 30 years later, doing the same thing. Only this time, with a new layer of the societal stack: Money.

Now money is a whole new deal — and it’s a whole lot more contentious.It’s a network for cooperation built on top of communication, which functions as a resource.

It’s more powerful than communication in many ways and because it’s core tenets have been forgotten over time (or conveniently swept under the rug) it’s been quite a lot easier to play games with it.

It’s been much easier to run the false narrative — that money is the domain of governments & central banks — and in the process create asymmetries in society that benefit rent seekers & penalise true progress & innovation.

BUT — physics is physics. You can only dam a river for so long, until nature just takes over & swallows it up.

The false narrative that holds together the current financial infrastructure is going to fall apart. It’s not an “if”, but a “when”.

The same way we reinvented communication & information; we’re now reinventing the very concept of money, value & broad cooperation, and true zero to one innovation requires a complete overhaul — not just a small, incremental update.

This is why listening to this JPM coin news, I hear the echoes of AOL & Telco’s from 30yrs ago.

One cannot compete with zero to one, no matter how much money or influence you have — because the zero to one is designed (largely) to remove you from the equation and shift the balance. JPM & the existing cohort aren’t going to do that to themselves, no matter how much they throw the words “blockchain”, “disruption” or “innovation” around.

Bitcoin & JPM coin are nothing alike, and JPM Coin is not really “news”.

If you want to ensure Dimon’s financial future — Buy JPM Coin.

If you want to ensure you own — Buy Bitcoin

2. Ripple…Lol

I’ve never liked Ripple, Cripple, XRP — whatever you want to call it these days.

The funniest part of this JPM coin thing is the fact that we can now say:

Broke: JPM Coin

Woke: Bitcoin

Cripple: Ripple

They’ve been announcing ‘announcements’ about announcements for so long now, and pretending like the banks really want to use their tech that it was about time the XRP fan club got something from the banking world to shake up their blind faith.

Perhaps it will give the Bitcoiner’s a little more time to focus on transforming the world’s financial infrastructure to something sound, while JPM & Ripple fight it out (although I may be overly hopeful here).

The boys at Multicoin Capital; Tushar Jain & Kyle Samani wrote up one of the best reports on Ripple (see below), so perhaps they’ll do a deep dive on JPM coin too when they have some time.

Ripple ($XRP) Analysis - Multicoin Capital_An executive summary is presented below. Download our complete 12 page analysis: Executive Summary Ripple is a…_multicoin.capital

For now; suffice it to say:

A potato cannot beat a Tesla in a race, and similarly;

Bitcoin & JPM Coin are simply not in the same league.

Dimon will have fan-dangled his way into using the ephemeral term “Blockchain” to help market his new product, and will surely make some money along the way; but the real innovations, the “facebook of the internet” that nobody saw coming — is yet to come — and that’s all going to be built on an open, public, lindy-compatible, sound, robust digital monetary network.

In the words of Anthony Pompliano: