Bad news for JPM

Pretty much everyone involved in Bitcoin claims to have retained counsel, and for all we know a majority of those blessed souls actually think they have retained counsel.

Whether this consists of having met a particularly convincing girl on obgyn-probe.info which only camwhores as "an adventure", otherwise being gainfully employed as chief paralegal for a big law firm (she claims) ; or having hired specialist experts with professional expertise etc on Odeskⁱ ; or who knows, even having sat next to a junior partner of some Bail Bonds - Workplace Claims - Divorce - DUI house in a bar somewhere, everyone's got lawyers. Hello sir, you no come to disturb, attorney got.

Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, you have JPM. This is not a bank, in spite of marketing itself as such. JPM is in point of fact a lawyer warehouse, a sort of dugout for all the people that are trying to be, and one day will be, high ranking government officials. It's the Washington platform, as it were. For every hour they spend in the pits, doing deals, being a bank, JPM people spend ten futzing in the courts, preparing briefs and making "forceful points". And one hundred schmoozing with the current top of the government, licking their way into position. Lobbying, as it's called. To make a long and pretty disgusting story very short, JPM definitely has lawyers.

Now consider this :

That's right : 5.8 Bn$ (like 44.5 mn BTC) net on 23.9 Bn$ (183.8 mn BTC) gross. And a legal charge of 9.2 Bn$ (70.7 mn BTC) that brought them squarely in the red.ⁱⁱ You know what 70.7 mn BTC is like ? It's like more than triple the Bitcoin than will be in circulation in 2113.

Now tell me again about what wisdom the Bitcoin Retardation had to impart at whatever conference, let me know all about the panels you participated in and what the speakers had to say. I care, deeply, because I know all that shit matters. Honestly.

After all, you got lawyers, right ? Not like those JPM noobs.

1. The Labcoin scam, about which you were reading here back in August finally became public knowledge in October. One of the more amusing details that came out as the entire thing unraveled is that the supposed "brain" of the entire thing was recruiting expert engineers to design ASICs on Odesk. And, obviously, failing to pay them. [↩]
2. Quoth the fat lady :
   

   While we had strong underlying performance across the businesses, unfortunately, the quarter was marred by large legal expense. We continuously evaluate our legal reserves, but in this highly charged and unpredictable environment, with escalating demands and penalties from multiple government agencies, we thought it was prudent to significantly strengthen them. While we expect our litigation costs should abate and normalize over time, they may continue to be volatile over the next several quarters.

   Short version : the USG can steal ten billion dollars off the world's #1 Investment Bank (mostly on the grounds that the USG made JPM the #1 IB by stealing other people's banks and giving them to JPM), and it has. Now what ? [↩]