So JP morgan now has a coin. The JPM coin. What is causing a lot of the confusion is that they are referring the coin to being a cryptocurrency. According to Marketwatch ,
Jerry Brito, the executive director at Coin Center, “a nonprofit research and advocacy center focused on cryptocurrency and decentralized technology, the U.S. banking behemoth did not actually launch a cryptocurrency but more an in-house-built payments system.”
“There’s a lot of confusion,” Brito told MarketWatch. “I see folks referring to it as a cryptocurrency. It’s not a cryptocurrency. A cryptocurrency is one that is open and permissionless, if you want to download it, you don’t need permission; you just need some software.”
Ripple’s CEO also mentions that JP Morgan doesn’t get the point of the blockchain which was a pretty strong statement. Cointelegraph captures some key points from him below:
““As predicted, banks are changing their tune on crypto. But this JPM project misses the point — introducing a closed network today is like launching AOL after Netscape’s IPO. 2 years later, and bank coins still aren’t the answer.”
“If banks of different digital asset groups want to settle trades with one another, they’ll have to make markets between their unique digital assets or trade between their digital assets and a common fiat currency. What a mess!”
It is also noted by cointelegraph that their coin could be essentially a competitor to ripple as noted by bloomberg but they are a stable coin which ripple is not.
They are running on a private blockchain which is pretty much integrated into the bank. There are benefits to running on the rails of an internal network, but having a private blockchain takes away from the whole concept of decentralization, being permissionless, and being able to download every transaction for transparency. We expect to see several incumbents creating private blockchains as well.
Top 5 Benefits they propose
According to American Banker, here’s some use cases that they will have:
(1) Increase velocity with faster & cheaper transactions
(2) Removes the checkpoints between transactions (also helps remove cross border fees)
(3) Cleaner / regulated system
(4) Promotes Risk Management
(5) Provides retail opportunities