Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan Chase will get involved in stablecoins

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says he doesn’t get the appeal of stablecoins, but he also can’t afford to stay on the sidelines.

It’s the message Dimon gave Tuesday when asked during an earnings conference call about whether his company, the largest and most influential U.S. bank, was exploring the payment technology.

Stablecoins, as the name suggests, are a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a steady value that are usually pegged to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar. Last month, JPMorgan announced it will launch a more limited version of a stablecoin that only works for JPMorgan clients; a true stablecoin would presumably be more universally accepted.

“We’re going to be involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and stablecoins to understand it, to be good at it,” Dimon said. “I think they’re real, but I don’t know why you’d want to [use a] stablecoin as opposed to just payment.”

Dimon, 69, is one of the most vocal opponents of certain cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. But his bank is a juggernaut in the global payments industry, helping move nearly $10 trillion daily, and so it makes sense that they would explore stablecoins at a time when the regulatory framework for the technology has opened up.

Failing to do so could cede ground to fintech players who are looking to recreate elements of the regulated financial ecosystem, Dimon said on Tuesday.

“You know, these guys are very smart,” Dimon said of his fintech competitors. “They’re trying to figure out a way to create bank accounts, to get into payment systems and rewards programs, and we have to be cognizant of that. And the way to be cognizant is to be involved.”

Stablecoins could offer a potentially faster and cheaper form of payment over traditional banking rails including ACH and SWIFT, which are decades-old systems that typically take days to settle.

Citigroup executives said Tuesday that the bank was “looking at the issuance of a Citi stablecoin” among several ways to play in the space. The biggest opportunity is around tokenized deposits and in providing custody for crypto assets, they said.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has also said his firm would get involved in stablecoins.

One way could be for traditional banks to collaborate through the jointly owned Early Warning Services. That would be similar to the way they banded together to offer Zelle for instant peer-to-peer payments as a way to defend turf against PayPal and Block’s Cash App.

When asked on Tuesday about a possible collaboration among banks, Dimon declined to give a specific answer.

“That’s a great question, and we’ll leave it remaining as a question,” Dimon said. “You can assume we’re thinking about all that.”

With reporting from CNBC’s Jesse Pound