“They’re All Afraid of Bitcoin”: Overstock’s Patrick Byrne on Dimon & China

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Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has scoffed at recent remarks by Jamie Dimon who labeled bitcoin ‘a fraud’ while adding that the crippling measures enforced by China to ban bitcoin exchanges are decisions made out of fearing bitcoin as a decentralized currency.

In a televised interview with Fox Business, Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne – having just returned stateside from China last week – was asked about Jamie Dimon’s comments and China’s draconian clampdown on the local bitcoin ecosystem.

He replied:

China is taking a position just like Jamie Dimon where they’ve come out and said ‘oh, suddenly they’re (Dimon & China) all afraid of it.’

Byrne, a noted advocate of bitcoin and its underlying technology – the blockchain, compared banker Jamie Dimon and governments like China to the established elite who weren’t pleased to see new technologies and innovations coming to the fore.

Notably, he stated:

The guys who belong to this financial world of debt-based, fiat-money, central-banking Keynesian spending – this magic money tree they all grew up in – they don’t like a form of currency that cannot be controlled by a government. What a surprise.

Byrne also revealed he personally knows Jamie Dimon for about 20 years, a banker he labelled as “a good guy”.

TV host Maria Bartiromo then repeated Dimon’s much-publicized quotes about bitcoin, including the statement that he would “fire” any JP Morgan trader engaging in bitcoin activity “in a second” for being “stupid.”

Byrne was quick to remind viewers of Dimon’s shareholder letter from 2015, when the banker stated bitcoin startups and others from Silicon Valley were coming “to eat our lunch.”

“He was scared to death of it,” Byrne added. “I think what they thought was they could get in front of it and they’re realizing they can’t get in front of it.”

He went ...