the american bank JP Morgan ended its relationship with the cryptocurrency exchange gemini, as revealed this Thursday by CoinDesk. The association between both companies dates back to April 2020when the firm led by Jamie Dimon would have accepted the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss brothers and Coinbase as clients.
JP Morgan’s decision comes just after crypto bank Silvergate has filed for voluntary bankruptcy. Silvergate recently delayed the release of its results, citing the bear market and investigations into its relationship with bankrupt FTX as the main reasons for the delay.
The FTX stock market crash prompted Silvergate depositors to withdraw $8 billion from the bank in the fourth quarter, triggering a liquidity crisis in the company.
The CEO of JP MorganJamie Dimon, had been against cryptocurrencies, particularly against the Bitcoin, which he described as fool’s gold.
gemini He denied on his Twitter account that the link had been terminated and assured that his relationship with JP Morgan remains “intact”. The CEO and co-founder of the ‘exchange’, Cameron Winklevoss, has not been pronounced.
The Winklevoss became famous for going through a dispute with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (Facebook) in which they sued him for allegedly stealing their idea. Zuckerberg won the trial and established himself as the founder of the world’s leading social network.
Gemini has been one of the most shaken companies after the FTX bankruptcy. It should be remembered that the Winklevoss have been locked for months with the bankrupt crypto-lender Genesis for the $900 million debt acquired as a result of the Gemini Earn program.
The SEC earlier this year accused Gemini of violate US regulations with their Gemini Earn program, that promised a return to customers who deposited their cryptocurrency holdings. Genesis, his lending partner in the program and a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), was also charged along with Gemini.
The financial problems that the company was going through and the crypto universe in general, greatly impacted by the collapse of FTX, made them resort to layoffs to close their balance sheets. gemini laid off 10% of its workforce in January, marking the company’s third round of layoffs since last June. The company went from having more than 1,100 employees to 600.
If this news is confirmed, JP Morgan would not be the only bank to move away from ‘cryptos’. In December, signaturewhich has been one of the most cryptocurrency-friendly banks on Wall Street, said that would reduce its cryptocurrency-linked deposits by $8-10 billion. As of September 2022, almost a quarter of the bank’s $103 billion in total deposits came from the ‘crypto’ sector. Additionally, Binance announced that the crypto bank would stop processing cryptocurrency transactions under $100,000.
Source: Ambito
