He further revealed that his investment firm nearly lost a customer because of the interference from banks.
Pokornicky revealed that the aforesaid customer is a lawyer and a “high net worth individual.” He further stated that they know each other for several years. The wealth manager said “He’s both a friend and someone I’ve worked with over the years.”
As per Pokornicky, his customer was ready to purchase a small quantity of BTC and add to his portfolio, but suddenly had a change of mind after interacting with executives at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.
Pokornicky pointed out that his attempts to know the reason for pulling back suddenly went futile.
He said “For him going from wanting to buy 1 Bitcoin to him not being interested means he was talked out of it. I still don’t know what was said to him”.
The wealth manager alleged that top institutions operating from Wall Street generally offer advise against investing in cryptocurrencies as per their company rules:
“My partner and I both worked on the buy side at a Hedge fund and/or Trading for most of our careers and we have an inordinate amount of wall street friends and colleagues that still work at big banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman, JPM, Wells Fargo, Merrill/BofA who are completely restricted from buying Bitcoin or have to go through insane compliance hoops to do it. The advisors that work for the Wealth Management divisions have a HARD NO Bitcoin policy.”
I have a client who was ready to buy #bitcoin & after talking to his Advisors at JPM & GS told me he’s not interested anymore. I asked what they said & instead of answering, he asked me to explain in one sentence what the benefits are to buying BTC now in terms of proven results.
— Adam Pokornicky (@callmethebear) April 30, 2020
JPMorgan maintains complex stance towards cryptos. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, a well-known cynic of Bitcoin, said that he “doesn’t really give a shit about Bitcoin,” but unveiled JPM Coin, a stablecoins-motivated cryptocurrency.
Goldman Sachs ventured into crypto sector long back with investments in several key projects such as Circle (an app for payments) and Tradeshift (a cloud based supply chain firm).
When queried whether he succeeded in persuading his customer to invest in Bitcoin, Pokornicky said:
“No not yet. My sense is he’ll come around, most likely at higher prices. They usually all do eventually.”