Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan is persuaded that decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain technology bring major growth potential, and is determined to remain “at the forefront of this innovation,” Jamie Dimon, the bank’s Chairman and CEO, wrote in his latest letter to the company's shareholders.

"Decentralized finance and blockchain are real, new technologies that can be deployed in both public and private fashion, permissioned or not," Dimon added.

JPMorgan currently processes payments for eight of the top 10 global big tech companies which mark an increase from three out of 10 companies five years earlier, the bank’s Chairman said.

“We continue to bring to the market and commercialize innovative products, such as embedded banking; AI-driven fraud controls and forecasting; and account validation and programmable payments on JPM Coin,” according to the letter. “We use a blockchain network called Liink to enable banks to share complex information, and we also use a blockchain to move tokenized US dollar deposits with JPM Coin.”

Dimon says the bank’s management shares the belief that “there are many uses where a blockchain can replace or improve contracts, data ownership and other enhancements; for some purposes, however, it is currently too expensive or too slow to be deployed.”

Meanwhile, last October, the executive took a swing at bitcoin (BTC), saying his personal view on the top cryptocurrency was that it was “worthless.” He did, however, added that JPMorgan’s clients were “adults,” and he was prepared to give them “as clean as possible access” to the coin.

At the same time, an October 2021 note released by the bank’s strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou and others said institutional investors could increasingly