It’s Christmas Magic: Banks Embrace Crypto and Praise AI
Welcome to Bloomberg’s Banking Industry Monitor. We’re publishing a day early ahead of the Christmas holiday and will do the same next week ahead of New Year’s Day. Normally, we’ll deliver you the top news of the global banking industry every Thursday with emerging trends, winners and losers and market opportunities. Sign up now if you’re not on the list; if you’re already a subscriber, send the link to your colleagues as a holiday gift.
Crypto was decking the great halls of banking during this holiday week. The latest embrace (or capitulation if you’re not a fan) came from JPMorgan Chase. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon has been famously critical of digital currencies, but customers apparently differ, so the biggest US bank is exploring cryptocurrency trading services for institutional clients.
On a smaller but still ambitious scale, a crypto-friendly bank backed by Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey dubbed Erebor has sought funding that would value the startup at $4.35 billion. Erebor was a mountain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit that was a storehouse of immense wealth. Fans of Tolkien might mischievously point out that Erebor the mountain became the locus of immense greed, disruption and conflict, featuring a magic ring that lulled its users into taking on more risk than they could handle. To be fair, though, the good guys won in the end.
There’s magic in the real world, too, where artificial intelligence has caused caution to disappear in debt markets and hope for a big upside to appear in bank forecasts. The latest upbeat assessment comes from Bank of America, where Brian Moynihan sees internal benefits starting to take hold while seeing limited risk of the AI industry itself overheating. For some personal career magic, head to Japan, where big banks are expanding their advisory teams during the nation’s dealmaking boom.
The Monitor will check in briefly next week about any odds and ends left over from 2025 and any hints about what’s to come in 2026. In the meantime, happy holidays to you and your family from everyone here at Bloomberg. — Rick Green