JPMorgan Expands Crypto Footprint With Investment In TRM Labs

By Kevin • March 2, 2022 11:45 am • Comments

The CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, has been a long time critic of the cryptocurrency industry, but the company has still acknowledged the potential of crypto due to demand from clients.

The bank announced that it would be making an investment in TRM Labs which is known as a blockchain analysis firm and indicates the bank’s increasing involvement with crypto and blockchain.

Investors are comparing this move to BNY Mellon’s recent move to partner with another blockchain analytics company named Chainalysis indicating increasing institutional awareness.

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Many are also speculating that much more is happening behind the scenes and that this is just what is revealed to the public as of right now.

Yahoo reports:

The JPMorgan investment “clearly highlights the significance of the growing crypto economy and the importance of building trust and safety in this ecosystem to sustain its growth,” Esteban Castano, TRM’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.

While firms like Chainalysis, TRM Labs and Elliptic work with a growing number of big names in the finance sector, most of their customers aren’t disclosed.

The Drugs and Crime Office of the United Nations (UNDOC) as well as the Internal Revenue Service, major British fintech, Revolut, and the online trading brokerage, Robinhood, all use blockchain analysis to monitor crypto transactions.

At the end of last year, TRM announced a $60 million raise led by Tiger Global; it also included the venture arm of American Express (AXP), Visa (V), and crypto venture capital firm, Castle Island Ventures.

TRM’s main strength is its capability to trace crypto across different blockchains such as the Solana blockchain specifically.

The company is been working with many other big names in the crypto industry such as Binance, Circle, and Moonpay which means that its services are high in demand.

This was not the first time that JP Morgan had also got involved with crypto as it had also recently got involved in the metaverse earlier this year when it announced the launch of its own virtual lounge in Decentraland.

The bank also has its own blockchain platform called Onyx which will be used to facilitate wholesale payments and the technologies that TRM Labs can provide could potentially help accelerate the future of secure blockchain and viable use cases that can be achieved.

Blockworks reports:

Separately, two JPMorgan research analysts Kenneth Worthington and Reginald Smith said in a report they see 2022 potentially as “the year of the blockchain bridge…or the year of financial tokenization.”

The analysts also said they expect the evolution of crypto markets to accelerate this year, particularly for financial services, Blockworks reported in January.

“Trust and safety is a prerequisite for crypto to be successful in the long run,” Castaño said.

“Blockchain intelligence builds greater trust and safety and enables crypto to become the next dominant financial system of the world.”

JP Morgan Chase is currently the largest American bank with a total of $3.29 trillion in assets.

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