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Although Wall Street has been hesitant to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, Bank of America (BAC+0.23%) CEO Brian Moynihan said that new regulation under President Donald Trump could help drive adoption by big banks.
Namely, Moynihan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday that the banking industry will become an active player in offering crypto payments, CNBC reported.
“If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it,” Moynihan, who helms the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, said.
“If you go down the street here and you go in and buy lunch, right, if you can pay with Visa (V+1.40%), Mastercard (MA+0.74%), a debit card, Apple Pay (AAPL-3.62%), etc., this would just be another form of payment,” Moynihan said. “We have hundreds of patents on blockchain already, we know how to enter the field.”
Bank of America received a record 644 patents in 2023, 6% of which were in blockchain technology. Blockchains store transaction data and other types of information for cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.
Not everyone on Wall Street shares the sentiment. JPMorgan Chase (JPM+1.58%) CEO Jamie Dimon, who has been an outspoken critic of Bitcoin for years, said last week that Bitcoin has “no intrinsic value.”
“I applaud your ability to want to buy or sell it, just like I think you have the right to smoke,” Dimon said of trading in the cryptocurrency. “But I don’t think you should smoke.”
Leaders across the crypto industry and beyond are enthusiastic that the new Trump administration will help drive adoption of cryptocurrencies — and investment into the burgeoning industry.
Speaking on a panel in Davos, Coinbase (COIN+1.02%) CEO Brian Armstrong said that legislation in Congress will bring fresh investment to cryptocurrencies. Binance CEO Richard Teng similarly said that the crypto market will hit a new all-time high this year thanks to “much clearer regulation” from the Trump administration, CNBC reported.