Mary Callahan Erdoes, a senior wealth management executive at banking giant JPMorgan, has revealed a large number of the bank’s clients see bitcoin as an asset class to invest in and noted the bank’s job is to help them invest.

During an interview with Bloomberg, Erdoes noted that the blockchain technology underlying major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is “very real and is changing all of the ways we digitally interact with the different financial markets.” Cryptocurrencies, she added, are new.

Erdoes added that in general there’s an ongoing debate as to whether cryptocurrencies are an asset class or not, but to a lot of JPMorgan clients, that debate is over. To them, it’s an asset class they want to invest in, and JPMorgan’s job is to “help them to put their money where they want to invest.”

The senior executive added that “we don’t have Bitcoin as an asset class per se” and only time will tell whether it is indeed a store of value. The volatility the cryptocurrency market currently has, she said, just “needs to play itself out.”

As CryptoGlobe reported, traditional financial institutions including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have bought shares in the first exchange-traded product (ETP) that offers investors exposure to Polkadot’s DOT cryptocurrency for clients earlier this year.

After JPMorgan published a report warning financial companies they risk falling behind in digital finance, the bank started issuing debt linked to crypto-focused companies. The debt instrument, called the J.P. Morgan Cryptocurrency Exposure Basket, was long on several companies with exposure to cryptoassets or associated with the industry.

The firm’s analysts have been closely following the cryptocurrency space and noted last month institutional investors weren’t stepping in to buy the dip after BTC’s price dropped from a $64,000 all-time high. The analysts estimated bitcoin’s medium-term fair value could be between $23,000 and $35,000.

The bank has in the past estimated that the price of bitcoin could hit $140,000 if it matches the allocation and volatility profile of the precious metal.

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