Strategy CEO Phong Le Says JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon Is a Bitcoin (BTC) Believer Behind the Scenes

Phong Le's “Bitcoiner Behind the Scenes” Claim

Strategy CEO Phong Le says JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon privately supports Bitcoin (BTC), despite years of the banker's public attacks on the asset. Le delivered the half-joking remark on Natalie Brunell's Coin Stories podcast, after Brunell asked what Dimon would make of Strategy's stated ambition to become the “JPMorgan of Bitcoin.” Le laughed before answering. “I think Jamie Dimon is a Bitcoiner behind the scenes, but he'll say what he needs to say externally,” he said. “I think everyone is a Bitcoiner privately once they learn and understand Bitcoin.” In his telling, exposure to the technology itself does the persuading — critics turn supporters once they study how the system actually works. Strategy, the US software company formerly known as MicroStrategy, has become the largest corporate owner of Bitcoin, holding roughly 846,000 coins — close to 4% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist. That hoard makes the firm the archetypal crypto whale and the template many treasuries copied when building their own strategic Bitcoin reserve. Le told Brunell he does not want Strategy to become a bank. His goal, he explained, is to sit at the center of Bitcoin-based finance, building and selling investment products the way JPMorgan does on Wall Street. He also pushed back on the notion that the asset will replace banks: in his reading, Bitcoin improves the existing financial system, and the US dollar stays in place. He went further, calling Bitcoin and artificial intelligence the two most important technologies of this century. Brunell closed the exchange by citing co-founder Michael Saylor's view — a core article of faith within Bitcoin maximalism — that everyone stands against Bitcoin before they stand for it.

Dimon's Record Versus JPMorgan's Ledger

Dimon's public track record runs in the opposite direction. On CNBC's Squawk Box in January 2024, the JPMorgan chief dismissed Bitcoin as a “pet rock” that does nothing — a remark preserved in the show's own clip posted by Squawk Box. “There are cryptocurrencies that do something, that might have value. And then there's one that does nothing, I call it pet rock,” he said at the time. In January 2025 he compared buying Bitcoin to smoking, saying people have the right to do it but should not, while repeating that the asset has no intrinsic value. Yet his bank has moved steadily closer to digital assets. In October 2025, JPMorgan said institutional clients could pledge Bitcoin as loan collateral, with third-party firms holding the coins — a custody-and-credit structure that treats the asset much like any other high-value collateral. The bank also holds a substantial position in spot Bitcoin ETFs, suggesting its investment arm sees durable demand for regulated exposure. Politics has added another layer: Donald Trump suggested last July that Dimon had softened — “Jamie Dimon was, you know, very negative and now all of a sudden he's changed his tune a little bit” — and briefly floated him for Treasury Secretary, though Dimon's most recent comments remain critical. Policy is where his resistance is most concrete. In May 2026 he said US banks would fight the CLARITY Act, the bill setting rules for US crypto markets, with his objection centered on rewards paid to holders of stablecoins, the dollar-pegged tokens. The same fight is surfacing in Europe, where the ECB's 57-page MiCA response seeks a stablecoin yield ban on lending and staking. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

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Rhetoric Diverges From Positioning

For our desk, the more telling signal is not whether Dimon is privately a Bitcoiner, but the measurable gap between his rhetoric and his bank's positioning. The primary record is unambiguous: Le's claim is an on-record podcast statement from the Coin Stories episode, Dimon's “pet rock” remark survives in the original broadcast clip, and the October 2025 collateral policy plus the bank's ETF book are JPMorgan's own actions, not commentary. As institutional Bitcoin adoption keeps compounding — the asset just posted its best September since 2012 with a 10.1% monthly gain — public skepticism and private exposure are proving able to coexist at the highest levels of traditional finance. Le's closing frame, echoing Saylor, is that studying Bitcoin does the converting.