First US Bank-Backed Crypto-Currency Created by JP Morgan

By: ِYassmine ElSayed

CAIRO, Feb. 17 (SEE) - A first cryptocurrency will be created by a major US bank as JP Morgan investment bank announced that it has created a crypto-currency to help settle payments between clients in its wholesale payments business.

JP Morgan said that it sees potential in using digital coins to reduce risk and enable instant transfers.

The crypto-currency, which runs on blockchain technology, has been used successfully to move money between the bank and a client account.

Although JP Morgan's Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has publicly criticised Bitcoin - the first crypto-currency in existence - on several occasions, the bank said it has always "believed in the potential of blockchain technology".

"We are supportive of crypto-currencies as long as they are properly controlled and regulated," Umar Farooq, JP Morgan's head of Digital Treasury Services and Blockchain, wrote in an online Q&A page.

According to CNBC, The lender moves more than $6 trillion around the world every day for corporations in its massive wholesale payments business.

In trials set to start in a few months, a tiny fraction of that will happen over something called "JPM Coin," the digital token created by engineers at the New York-based bank to instantly settle payments between clients.

Virtual currencies can be used to pay for things in the real world, such as a hotel room, food or even a house.

Digital tokens are held in online wallets, and can be sent anonymously between users.

For this reason, crypto-currencies are attractive to people who want to make illegal purchases on the Dark Web - a part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines.