Former U.S. President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump floated JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as a potential Treasury Secretary pick, praising the influential Wall Street figure and noted Bitcoin skeptic in an interview published by Bloomberg Businessweek Tuesday.
“I have a lot of respect for Jamie Dimon,” Trump said. “He is somebody that I would consider.”
Dimon was present last month among 70 CEOs from major firms at a meeting in Washington, D.C., which Trump described as a “lovefest.” During the chat hosted by lobbying organization Business Roundtable, Trump vowed to lower the top marginal corporate tax rate to 20%, adding that 15% is his true goal later.
As Trump continues to court crypto votes on the campaign trail ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, his admiration of Dimon highlights a well-established antagonist of the industry.
While powerful CEOs such as BlackRock’s Larry Fink have come around to Bitcoin as a “legitimate financial instrument,” Dimon’s criticism has persisted over the years.
“If I was the government, I’d close it down,” Dimon said of crypto during a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year. “I’ve always been opposed to crypto, Bitcoin, et cetera.”
Responding to a question posed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Dimon added that “the true use case for [crypto] is criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, [and] tax avoidance.”
Following Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is currently fifth in the line of succession for president. Responsible for creating and suggesting financial, economic, and tax policy, the position would give Dimon authority on a broad set of matters.
Picked by Trump in 2016, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin once underlined cryptocurrencies as “a national security issue.” Speaking about the need to regulate digital asset service providers in 2019, he said, “We will not allow [them] to operate in the shadows.”
Dimon appeared to soften his stance on Bitcoin somewhat in March when he said he respects people’s right to hold the asset. Still, he said his defense of that was comparable to someone’s decision to “smoke a cigarette.”
During an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Dimon said he would never speak about Bitcoin again while calling it “shit.” Months later, he reiterated his stance that Bitcoin is “a fraud” during an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang.
Trump, meanwhile, has followed a similar path to BlackRock’s Fink. After saying Bitcoin “seems like a scam” in 2021, the former president has come out swinging for crypto, blasting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory approach, accepting crypto donations, and defending America’s Bitcoin mining industry.
Dimon has praised Trump himself. And following the failed assassination attempt against Trump by Thomas Matthew Cooks during a Pennsylvania rally Saturday, Dimon reportedly emphasized in a company-wide email that now is the time for unity, while disavowing political violence.
“We must all stand firmly together against any acts of hate, intimidation or violence that seek to undermine our democracy or inflict harm,” he wrote, per Quartz. “It is only through constructive dialogue that we can tackle our nation’s toughest challenges.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
