On August 15, there were rumours involving JP Morgan investing $20 million in Ethereum development firm ConsenSys. This was estimated to be a part of the total investment deal worth $50 million, and ConsenSys could also merge with JPMorgan’s blockchain development unit Quorum to take over support and maintenance aspects.
All speculations were put to rest on August 25, when the announcement of ConsenSys acquiring JP Morgan’s Quorum to advance enterprise blockchain adoption was shared with crypto-verse. ConsenSys, the Brooklyn-based blockchain software firm is run by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.
There have been significant developments in the crypto front of the banking giant in recent times. Last year, JP Morgan Chase announced its own blockchain-based payment system, JPM Coin. The bank has also signed popular regulated exchanges – Coinbase and Gemini and is now providing USA users of the two exchanges with deposits and withdrawals via wire transfer, Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions and cash management services.
2020: Year of mainstream cryptocurrency
In one of her recent pieces, Catherine Coley, CEO of Binance (USA) shares that in 2016, she knew little about the cryptocurrency industry, while today she leads one of the top digital asset marketplaces. With this journey, Catherine considers herself an example that anyone can learn about cryptocurrency. The interest in cryptocurrency has also boomed in 2020 owing to the pandemic, she observes.
Goldman Sachs too, recently named Mathew McDermott the new head of digital assets in bet that blockchain is the future of financial markets. McDermott’s vast experience and successful stint across multiple positions, his leadership in DLT and cryptocurrency domains at the bank of global repute is expected to consolidate digitisation of the crypto market.
Best of both worlds
In a statement, Joseph Lubin, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys and Co-creator of Ethereum shares that he looks forward to continuing his firm’s multifaceted partnership with JP Morgan for years to come, and ushering in an era of ‘enterprise and mainnet compatibility’.
All enterprise ventures underway at ConsenSys will henceforth fall under the newly formed ‘ConsenSys Quorum’ brand, and the Ethereum based software firm now plans to merge its existing protocol engineering roadmap with Quorum.
As per Daniel Heyman, engineering manager at Consensys, one of the aspects of taking over this technology is that his company will be supporting JPMorgan in its blockchain efforts. This would benefit the overall ecosystem, as anyone building on Quorum will get a proper software vendor behind their technology.
Naturally, expectations from the outcome of the best of both codebases integrating in the crypto world would be quite high now.
