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October 19, 2022: Aaron lovine, the former executive of Celsius, has joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. lovine was head of policy and regulatory affairs at bankrupt crypto lender Celsius, which he left in September after an eight-month stint.
lovine joins JP Morgan in the position of executive director of digital assets regulatory policy. A company spokesperson confirmed the news but declined to give additional details. The news broke on lovine's LinkedIn profile, just days after JPMorgan Chase & Co's Chief Executive Jamie Dimon described cryptocurrencies as fraud, fool's gold, and decentralized Ponzi schemes.
Bloomberg reported lovine's appointment to the newly appointed position. JPMorgan's general counsel for the last seven years, Stacey Friedman, declined a request to comment on the financial services giant's interest in lawyers familiar with DLT (distributed ledger technologies).
In May 2022, Alex Mashinsky was head of Celsius Network, a crypto lending organization. While in his position as CEO, Mashinsky withdrew $10 million from the company account. The company halted all customer withdrawals just weeks later, citing extreme market conditions. Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just one month later in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
Mashinsky resigned as CEO on September 27, 2022. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem angered crypto markets. This collapse saw $60 billion in value wiped off the market in a month. Celsius stated at the time, "Without a pause, the acceleration of withdrawals would have allowed certain customers, those who were first to act, to be paid in full while leaving others behind to wait for Celsius to harvest value from illiquid or longer-term asset deployment activities before they receive a recovery."
Three years ago, JP Morgan announced its involvement with cryptocurrency. The company's engineers created the first US bank-backed digital token, the "JPM Coin." Already moving some $6 trillion around the globe every day, their JPM Coin enabled the bank to settle payments between clients instantly.
In joining the crypto markets, JP Morgan admitted that the super-fast speed with which smart contracts enabled payments was the future. Umar Farooq, head of JP Morgan's blockchain projects, said at the time, "So anything that currently exists in the world, as that moves onto the blockchain, this would be the payment leg for that transaction. The applications are frankly quite endless; anything where you have a distributed ledger which involves corporations or institutions can use this."
The JPM Coin is not available for retail customers; it is merely an internal project which the company uses to transfer payments between its international clients. First, clients pay fiat money into the JP Morgan account. Next, the company converts it at parity into digital tokens; then, the client uses the tokens on the bank's blockchain, Quorum. Finally, whoever holds the tokens can redeem them for US dollars.
This appointment has undoubtedly raised a few eyebrows in both the traditional and digital banking worlds. lovine will work in the bank's regulatory affairs group under boss Sharon Wang. However, many people question the move, considering lovine's connection with a controversial company like Celsius.
Many news agencies immediately reached out to lovine and JP Morgan, but both refused to comment further. So it remains to be seen if the controversy will quieten over time. The company is no stranger to controversy; only last week, it cut ties with rapper Kanye West. The company ended its relationship with West after he posted anti-Semitic comments on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
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The much talked about Polygon MATIC cryptocurrency platform is directed and discussed to provide a thorough guide to this relatively new kid on the block
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