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JPMorgan’s head of digital assets: ‘We’re in the Napster age of crypto’

Bank's crypto lead mulls what the future of digital currencies might look like

The speed of innovation in the digital assets space is ‘dizzying, literally dizzying’, said Umar Farooq

By
Trista Kelley

Make no mistake, crypto is here to stay. That’s according to Umar Farooq, chief executive of JPMorgan’s digital-assets unit Onyx, who says the trickier question is how the digital currency space ends up evolving beyond the zigzag nature of development we have seen so far.

“In the 90s, there was this thing called Napster,” Farooq told Financial News in a Barron’s Live event on 13 January, referring to the peer-to-peer song exchange platform co-founded by early Facebook backer Sean Parker.

“It...