The chairman of one of the largest financial institutions in the world has changed his views on bitcoin, backpedalling on comments in which he asserted that the cryptocurrency was a "fraud".

Speaking to Fox Business, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, expressed regrets on making his previous statements criticising both bitcoin and blockchain tech.

He said he now believes that "blockchain is real" and that crypto can be seen as real currency, adding that in the case of initial coin offerings each one should be looked at individually. He remarked that bitcoin would be defined by how governments felt about it once it became "really big". Despite making a number of comments about bitcoin in the past, he stressed that he was not at interested in the subject.

In the past, Dimon has spoken critically about crypto and its investors, stating that those who were "stupid enough to buy it" would suffer the costs eventually. During a conference held by the Institute of International Finance, Dimon said that bitcoin's value was only worth what someone else was willing to pay for it, going on to suggest that buyers were "jazzing up" currencies to get people to buy them.