United States, Nov. 10, 2020 /AlexaBlockchain/ – JPMorgan Chase is creating a new business unit called Onyx to manage its blockchain and digital currency solutions.
Takis Georgakopoulos, JPMorgan global head of wholesale payments, said, “We are launching Onyx because we believe we are shifting to a period of commercialization of those technologies, moving from research and development to something that can become a real business.”
JPMorgan is also considering separate payment rails for central banks that have been willing to create their national cryptocurrency. “Look at China, you look at Singapore, they’re looking for use cases for digital currencies,” Georgakopoulos said. “If we are able to develop a model that works, we think the probability of adoption becomes very high.”
Blockchain technology now seems to move beyond hype and it is now potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.
Umar Farooq, CEO of Onyx, said, referring to stages of the Gartner cycle, “If you think about blockchain, we are either somewhere in the trough of disillusionment or just beyond that on the hype curve. That’s why at JPMorgan we’ve been relatively quiet about it until we were ready to scale it and commercialize it.”