JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, a longtime Bitcoin critic, said he would ban crypto if he were in the government. Meanwhile, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest dumped 237,572 Coinbase shares from its three funds and made at least $33 million, while Bitcoin’s open interest on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) came close to setting a new all-time high. 

“If I was the government, I’d close it down,” Dimon says of crypto

Dimon took another shot at crypto after he told lawmakers he would ban the asset class if he were in their position. 

In a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Dimon responded to questions from fellow Bitcoin cryptic Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts.

“If I was the government, I’d close it down,” he remarked. 

Dimon is a notorious crypto critic, referring to all assets in the space as “decentralized Ponzi schemes.” Ironically, his firm has made notable inroads into blockchain technology, tokenization and programmable payments.

Cathie Wood’s ARK dumps 237,000 Coinbase shares at $140

ARK Invest dumped 237,572 Coinbase shares from its three funds and made at least $33 million as Coinbase stock closed at $140 per share.

The trading firm offloaded 201,711 Coinbase shares from the ARK Innovation ETF alone, with an additional 28,535 and 7,326 being sold by the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF and the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF, respectively.

This latest sale is one of ARK’s largest daily Coinbase sales of 2023, third only to the massive 478,356 share sale on July 14 and 248,838 share sale on July 17. At the time, Coinbase stock traded around $105.

CME’s Bitcoin futures open interest nears all-time high

Bitcoin futures open interest has reached $5.2 billion on the global derivatives giant Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), $200 million shy of its late October 2021 all-time high.

CME’s Bitcoin futures open interest grew from $3.63 billion to $5.2 billion over the past 30 days, Coinglass data shows.

The surge has run parallel to Bitcoin’s 26% gain over the same time. BTC is currently trading at just under $44,000.

From Oct. 1 to 21, 2021, open interest in CME’s Bitcoin futures surged from $1.46 billion to $5.45 billion, which coincided with a drastic spot price jump from $45,000 to $66,000.

IG Australia analyst Tony Sycamore told Cointelegraph the uptick signals a renewed interest in Bitcoin but doesn’t explain how CME traders are positioned.

Sycamore said that until CME’s report on Dec. 12, investors won’t be able to see exactly how the players at CME are positioned. Its Nov. 28 report showed its “big players” were sitting net short.

“What we can’t see right now is whether the big players have gone from a net short to a net long, Sycamore said.