Previously, he was the head of policy, regulatory affairs and the chief executive officer of the bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius, where he was the head of policy, regulatory affairs. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, may call cryptocurrencies like Cryptographic “decentralized Ponzi Schemes,” but that hasn’t stopped the world’s biggest investment bank from hiring a head of regulatory policy for digital assets.
Aaron Iovine was a similar employee at the now bankrupt crypto lending company Celsius. He joined JPMorgan according to a Bloomberg Law Report.
Iovine’s LinkedIn Profile states that he worked for Celsius from February to September, after a nearly three-year stint at Cross River, a New Jersey-based financial service company.
According to reports, he will work with JPMorgan’s regulatory affairs team headed by Sharon Yang. Sharon Yang was previously a deputy assistant secretary for foreign financial markets at the Treasury Department.
Decrypt We reached out to JPMorgan as well as Iovine to get their comments. However, we have yet to hear back from them at the time this article was written.
Iovine was appointed less than a month after JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon lashed out at cryptocurrency, saying most people are skeptical of crypto tokens […] similar to Bitcoin” and comparing the new asset category to a “decentralized Ponzi scheme.”
Bitcoin was first mentioned by the 66-year-old billionaire in January 2014.
This was not long after Mt. Gox stated that Bitcoin was the largest digital asset in the world and “a terrible store of value”, and that it “can be duplicated over and over.
Dimon has repeatedly called Bitcoin a fraud and fool’s gold over the years. However, JPMorgan launched JPM Coin in 2019 as a U.S. dollar pegged stablecoin.
The bank allows wealth management clients to purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. It also offers shares in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ( GBTC).
JPMorgan also posted an opening earlier this month for a digital asset counsel position with its corporate investment bank in New York. The successful applicant will be responsible for a broad range of duties including advising on regulatory compliance and daily business support, and documentation issues related to the bank’s digital asset initiatives.
