A crypto company that trolled JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon in the Wall Street Journal got 20,000 downloads as a result

Eidoo’s full page ad in the Wall Street Journal.Frank Chaparro/Business Insider

• Crypto startup Eidoo ran ad mocking Jamie Dimon in September.
• CEO says its app had 20,000 downloads on the day the ad ran.

LONDON — The cryptocurrency startup that took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal mocking JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said it saw a big bump in downloads of its app as a result.

Eidoo ran a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal in September to fire back at JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who in September called bitcoin “a fraud” and said he would fire JPMorgan staff if he found they were trading bitcoin.

The text of the ad said: “Maybe Jamie will fire you. But you will be free to trade in the crypto world.”

Eidoo CEO Thomas Bertani told Business Insider this week that the startup’s app was downloaded around 20,000 times that day — a significant bump. The startup only hit 100,000 downloads in early November.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.Business Insider

“The ROI was very good,” Bertani said. “It was worth it.”

Eidoo provides a mobile wallet for people to store their cryptocurrency in and is building additional features such as a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange and a feature that will let people invest in initial coin offerings (ICO) through its app.

Eidoo raised $27.9 million through an ICO in October. An ICO is where startup issues new digital currencies, formatted similarly to bitcoin, in return for money to fund their business.

Bertani said Eidoo pursued an ICO partly to help spur adoption of the service.

“One of the reasons we did the ICO is to force people to see the progress we’d made so far,” he said. Eidoo has to date had over 150,000 downloads, Bertani added.

Cryptocurrency has attracted increased attention in recent weeks thanks to the dramatic rise of bitcoin. JPMorgan’s Dimon said on Friday he is still “highly sceptical.”