JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon banking on digital currency

JP Morgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon goes from bitcoin sceptic to pusher. Photo / Getty Images

Billionaire Jamie Dimon famously dubbed bitcoin "stupid" and "fraud", but now the boss of one of America's largest banks is pushing his company into the world of cryptocurrencies.

Dimon-led JPMorgan Chase will reportedly start issuing bitcoin-like digital currencies called "JPM Coins", making it the first major bank to issue its own form of the digital money, according to the New York Post.

Umar Farooq, head of JPMorgan's blockchain projects, told CNBC the JPM Coins would be worth a dollar each, and would largely be used to speed up transactions, settlements, and treasury services.

"So anything that currently exists in the world, as that moves onto the blockchain, this would be the payment leg for that transaction.

"The applications are frankly quite endless; anything where you have a distributed ledger which involves corporations or institutions can use this."

Dimon has since apologised for calling bitcoin fraud, saying the technology behind it – blockchain – had real applications for the financial industry.

And according to CNN, while Dimon was publicly bashing bitcoin, his bank, JPMorgan Chase, was quietly researching the promise of blockchain.

"We've always been supportive of blockchain. We've always believed it's a good technology," Farooq told CNN after the JPM Coin announcement.