Major American investment bank JPMorgan is upping its blockchain hiring spree by posting a series of new blockchain-related job openings. JPMorgan has opened multiple positions to pursue its global blockchain development efforts, including job postings targeting blockchain-focused software developers, engineers, marketers and auditors. According to the company’s open positions on LinkedIn, many of these new blockchain-related job postings were published in the last few days. The new job postings seek blockchain talent across several of JPMorgan’s branches worldwide, including the United States, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and other countries. The company posted more than 30 such openings …

American megabank JPMorgan has continued criticizing El Salvador’s declaration of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender, warning of the potential risks for both the country and the cryptocurrency. A JPMorgan expert group led by economist Steven Palacio released a report suggesting that El Salvador adopting BTC as legal tender could put a strain on the Bitcoin network, Bloomberg reported Sunday. The experts said that Bitcoin is highly illiquid, noting that most Bitcoin trading volumes are internalized by major exchanges, with more than 90% of Bitcoin not changing hands in more than a year. The use of Bitcoin as legal tender in …

Financial authorities in France and Singapore are actively exploring the cross-border applications of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In a joint announcement on Thursday, the Bank of France and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said that they successfully completed a whole cross-border payment and settlement experiment using CBDCs and blockchain technology. The CBDC experiment was conducted with support and expertise from JPMorgan's digital currency-focused Onyx division on a permissioned, privacy-enabled blockchain based on the investment bank's Quorum blockchain infrastructure. As part of the experiment, the Bank of France and MAS simulated cross-border and cross-currency transactions for a Singapore dollar-based …

The launch of the energy efficient Ethereum 2.0 network will popularize the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and make staking yields a more attractive source of income for both institutional and retail investors according to a new JPMorgan report. The authors estimate that holders of staked coins on PoS blockchains are currently generating some $9 billion in revenue annually from their staked holdings. When Ethereum completes its transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) next year, the analysts expect payouts will more-than-double to $20 billion. They project staking yields across the blockchain industry to double again to $40 billion by 2025. The …

Gold is set to outperform Bitcoin (BTC) in the second quarter of 2021. An ounce of gold has surged from $1,707.45 on April 1 to over $1,750 in the still-running June 30 session. That marked a roughly 3.9% jump over the quarter. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has plunged by more than 40% to below $35,000 after topping out near $65,000 in mid-April, all in the same period. The inverse correlation between Bitcoin and gold markets surged specifically in April and May 2021. Analysts at JPMorgan noted in May that large institutional investors rotated their money out of the overvalued crypto markets to …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) weekend dance between $30,000 and $34,000 seems to strengthen the short-term uncertainty narrative, as JPMorgan strategists believe the cryptocurrency market is not yet healthy. A Friday note from the JPMorgan Chase team suggested that the near-term setup for Bitcoin still looks challenging. Based on the on-chain data, JPMorgan strategists said that “there is likely still an overhang of underwater positions which need to be cleared through the market.” JPMorgan lists the Bitcoin futures market’s stability and the possibility of increased production costs due to miners’ migration from China as positive factors. Bitcoin’s cost of production is historically tied …

After six months of eyeing JPMorgan Chase’s custom blockchain service for repo markets, Goldman Sachs has started trading on the platform. Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs’ global markets division, confirmed the first transaction dated June 17 in an interview, Bloomberg reported. In the trade, Goldman Sachs swapped a tokenized version of a United States Treasury bond for JPM Coin, JPMorgan’s dollar-pegged stablecoin. JPMorgan started its private blockchain service to drive efficiency in repo agreements last year. The platform uses JPM Coin to swap digitized United States Treasury bonds. Goldman Sachs was one of the first …

JPMorgan is the latest source to respond to El Salvador’s decision to adopt Bitcoin (BTC) as legal currency within the country. In a client note tweeted by @DocumentingBTC, the United States banking giant stated that there was little economic benefit to El Salvador adopting BTC as a parallel legal tender to the U.S. dollar. JP Morgan on El Salvador adopting #Bitcoin Notice the last line... pic.twitter.com/5hl0kR9WB0 — Documenting Bitcoin (@DocumentingBTC) June 11, 2021 On Thursday, El Salvador’s parliament passed a historic bill to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. The “Bitcoin Law” bill passed by an overwhelming majority of 62 out …

JPMorgan’s cryptocurrency market analysts have pointed to the difference between Bitcoin’s (BTC) spot prices and BTC futures prices as a potential bearish sign for the market. In a Thursday note to clients, JPMorgan analysts led by global market strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote that the Bitcoin market has returned to backwardation — a situation when the spot price is above futures prices. The analysts said that the past month’s correction in crypto markets saw Bitcoin futures reversing into backwardation for the first time since 2018. According to the strategists, Bitcoin futures backwardation should be viewed as a negative sign for BTC …

Following the worst May for Bitcoin’s (BTC) price in the past 10 years, the largest cryptocurrency is likely to continue falling in the short term, according to JPMorgan analysts. Weakened institutional demand is likely to drag the Bitcoin price below $30,000, JPMorgan strategist and Bitcoin expert Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote in the latest research note to clients. Based on Bitcoin’s volatility ratios to gold, the JPMorgan analyst forecasted that Bitcoin will continue to trade between $24,000 and $36,000 in the mid-term. “The fair value for bitcoin based on a volatility ratio of Bitcoin to gold of around x4 would be 1/4th …

Major Wall Street bank executives will appear before the United States Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday to discuss the role of their financial institutions in the recovery of the American economy. Democratic lawmakers plan to grill a number of major bank execs, whose firms saw record profits during the COVID-19 pandemic while average Americans struggled to make ends meet. In prepared testimonies posted on Tuesday, CEOs at the Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo described their respective banks' responses to major challenges such as inequality, diversity, climate change, taxes, as well as how their banks handle cryptocurrencies. This year …

The Bitcoin (BTC) market bias stands divided on how to interpret the BTC price crash this week, wherein the pair lost more than 35% of its value at one point on Wednesday, crashing to as deep as $30,000 on Coinbase. Global media outlets attributed the plunge to China reiterating its anti-crypto business stance and Tesla suddenly discontinuing Bitcoin payments for its electric vehicles. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, managing director for global market strategy at JP Morgan, further noted an ongoing decline in the capital that flows into publicly listed Bitcoin funds. He suspected a rotational investment setup, wherein institutional investors were winding …