Ex-JPMorgan Energy Head: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency a ‘True Financial Revolution’

Danny Masters used to direct JPMorgan’s energy trading operations. Now, he’s started Global Adivsors, an investment firm that’s delved deeply into bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies. Masters is now saying that banks will only continue to be walloped by the “true financial revolution” that is the cryptoverse. 

Masters: “I Just Threw Out My Chequebook”

As a former investment wiz at JPMorgan and Shell, Danny Masters knows a thing or two about speculating.

But he’s long since taken his skills to a new arena: cryptocurrency. And, over the past few years, he’s quickly realized that the battle of old versus new has already reached a tipping point.

“Banks have sat on their laurels for 30 years. I just threw out my chequebook, it looks exactly the same as it did in 1985,” Masters said in new comments to the press. “[Banks] have absolutely failed to innovate in any way, shape, or form and now they’re paying the price.”

The War Is Already Here

The former JPMorgan energy head went on to suggest that you’re not looking close enough if you don’t already see the battle lines being drawn:

“There’s something of a trench warfare going on between what I call analogue financial services companies and digital financial services companies […] The analogue financial services companies are not in this game at all. They don’t want to touch the core currency, which is bitcoin or ethereum, they’re suspicious about the industry itself.

[…] We saw Charlie Munger on February 17th call bitcoin asinine. We heard Jamie Dimon call bitcoin a fraud.

[…] Banks have gone from dismissive, to unified in their resistance. Why? Why is something they ridiculed three months ago now something they feel the need to unite against and try and kill? There’s been a lot of aggressive things from banks.”

To the “why,” many enthusiasts in the cryptocurrency space would say it’s because the world’s largest banking institutions — known for their lumbering bureaucracy — are finally starting to wake up to the fact that young fiery cryptocurrency upstarts are seemingly revolutionizing finance right before their very eyes.

Or, as Masters puts it, “it is abundantly clear that we are in the midst of a true financial revolution.”

We Know What Masters Would Say to Warren Buffet

As the founder of Global Advisers, Masters deals with cryptocurrency investments day-in and day-out. For now, then, he’s at the vanguard of his field, as many other traditional investors are steering clear of crypto for now.

In that lot, count Berkshire Hathaway’s “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett, who has previously made it clear that bitcoin and the like is not for him.

Curiously, though, Buffett’s latest annual letter to his shareholders was just published, and in it he declared Berkshire Hathaway has a whopping $116 billion laying around just waiting for the right investments.

He wrote:

“This extraordinary liquidity earns only a pittance and is far beyond the level Charlie [Munger] and I wish Berkshire to have. Our smiles will broaden when we have redeployed Berkshire’s excess funds into more productive assets.”

To that, we know what Masters would probably say: give cryptocurrency a shot, Mr. Buffett. It may just end up being the next great societal revolution.

What’s your take? Do you agree with Masters, are big banks ages behind the innovation that cryptocurrency projects are spurring today? Sound off in the comments below. 

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