JPMorgan plans to make JPM Coin, its token for US dollar deposits, available to institutional clients on Ethereum mainnet as well as on Base, Bloomberg reported on Monday 19 October, according to CoinDesk. The token, ticker JPMD, has run on Coinbase’s Base network since November 2025 and nothing in the report says it will leave it. The bank did not reply to CoinDesk’s request for details before publication, and no launch date has been given.
So the JPM Coin Ethereum move is, for now, a report rather than a confirmed launch. Emma Landriault, head of Kinexys Labs at the bank’s blockchain unit, spoke to Bloomberg but did not say when the token would arrive. Italian site Criptovaluta.it wrote the same morning that the announcement had already gone out to institutional clients. JPMorgan had published nothing on its own site about it by midday European time.
Despite the name, this is not a stablecoin. JPM Coin is a deposit at JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., written as a token, and it moves only between clients the bank has vetted. Putting it on the main Ethereum chain places a regulated bank liability on the network that already carries JPMorgan’s tokenised money market funds, while keeping it closed to anonymous wallets and open DeFi apps.
JPM Coin on Ethereum: what the Bloomberg report says and what is missing
According to the report as relayed by CoinDesk, the Ethereum step is part of a plan to take JPM Coin beyond Base. Landriault said the bank chose Ethereum because it offers more liquidity than rival networks and institutional clients already use it. Almost $50 billion of crypto assets are locked in Ethereum-based applications, CoinDesk wrote, citing DefiLlama.
Two groups of users are named as targets. One is crypto firms that want to make payments on a blockchain. The other is financial firms that need a token to settle trades or to back tokenised assets.
There is no launch date. No Ethereum contract address appears in the reports we read, and nothing says whether the Base and Ethereum versions will be one token moved across a bridge or two separate issues. Cryptowisser described JPMD as moving peer to peer within a supported EVM set of chains that includes both Base and Ethereum, without giving technical detail.
The bank’s own JPM Coin product page, checked on 19 October, still describes the token as issued on Base, an Ethereum layer 2 built within Coinbase, and does not mention Ethereum mainnet at all. Until that page or a press release changes, the Ethereum version is announced, not live.
Ether’s price hardly moved. ETH traded near $2,423 at 10:36 UTC on 19 October, up 0.10% over 24 hours and down 4.45% over seven days, with bitcoin around $82,320 at the same time.
From Base to Ethereum mainnet: same bank token, one more chain
Base is a layer 2 network built by Coinbase. It settles to Ethereum and relies on its security, but it is a separate chain with its own fees, apps and smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool of liquidity. Ethereum mainnet is the base layer itself, where most tokenised funds and the largest stablecoin balances sit.
Based on what JPMorgan has said about the Base version and what Monday’s reports describe, the product itself should not change much:
- The issuer remains JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., through Kinexys, the bank’s blockchain unit.
- The token is available in US dollars only and can be redeemed for dollars on the client’s account at any time.
- Clients still move cash in and out through a Blockchain Deposit Account (BDA) at the bank.
- Only approved counterparties can take part, and transfers on the network run around the clock.
What could change is the use. On mainnet, JPM Coin could act as the cash side of a delivery-versus-payment trade, where a tokenised security and the money for it swap in the same transaction. ETHNews pointed out that each such arrangement needs compatible smart contracts, approved participants and legally recognised settlement procedures. None of that has been announced.
JPMorgan already has products on Ethereum. Cryptowisser reported that the bank launched its first tokenised money market fund there in December 2025 and a second in May 2026. No link between those funds and JPM Coin has been announced, and ETHNews noted that the expansion does not show that the JLTXX fund accepts JPMD.
Deposit token vs stablecoin: a claim on JPMorgan, not on a reserve pool
On a block explorer the two look alike. Both are dollar tokens meant to be worth one dollar. The difference is who owes the money.
A stablecoin such as USDC or USDT is issued by a company that is not a bank, Circle or Tether, and is backed by a pool of reserves: cash, Treasury bills and similar assets. Once issued, it can change hands on exchanges and circulate across DeFi. Our beginner’s guide to stablecoins explains how those reserves work.
A deposit token is a bank deposit in another format. It sits on the bank’s balance sheet, like money in a current account, and JPMorgan’s page says it carries the credit risk profile of commercial bank money. The bank redeems it, and its capital, liquidity and anti-money laundering rules apply. Holders are known clients, so it does not drift into anonymous wallets.
A central bank digital currency is a third thing again: a direct claim on the central bank. The digital euro is the European example, and Christine Lagarde has set its pilot for 2027, though the law behind it is not yet agreed. Criptovaluta.it noted on Monday that the Bank of England also favours the deposit token model.
For a bank, the deposit token keeps the money, and the client, inside the regulated system. For a crypto trading firm, it is a dollar on chain whose issuer is a bank with a public balance sheet rather than a company publishing reserve reports.
Kinexys moves over $7 billion a day: the figures behind JPM Coin
Kinexys, JPMorgan’s blockchain business, already handles more than $7 billion a day, CoinDesk wrote on Monday. That is a small slice of the roughly $12 trillion a day that runs through the bank’s payments business. In April, JPMorgan’s own figure for Kinexys was more than $5 billion a day.
| Item | Value | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Kinexys daily volume | More than $7bn | CoinDesk, 19 Oct 2026 |
| Kinexys cumulative volume | More than $4tn | Cryptowisser, 19 Oct 2026 |
| Kinexys in April | More than $3tn cumulative, more than $5bn a day | JPMorgan newsroom, 28 Apr 2026 |
| JPMorgan payments, all channels | About $12tn a day | CoinDesk, 19 Oct 2026 |
| Crypto assets locked in Ethereum apps | Almost $50bn | CoinDesk citing DefiLlama, 19 Oct 2026 |
| JPMD on Base | Proof of concept June 2025, available 12 Nov 2025 | JPMorgan newsroom |
| JPMD on Canton | Announced 7 Jan 2026, phased through 2026 | Decrypt |
Nobody can quote a JPM Coin price. JPMD is not listed or traded: each token is backed by dollar deposits at the bank and redeemed for dollars, so a search for a JPM Coin price will not find a market value.
How JPM Coin got here: a private chain, then Base, with Canton planned
The first JPM Coin, unveiled in February 2019, ran only on the bank’s own permissioned ledger, and Kinexys still offers blockchain deposit accounts on that private chain.
A proof of concept on Base started in June 2025, during which crypto trading firm B2C2, Coinbase and Mastercard completed near-instant issuance and redemption of JPMD. On 12 November 2025 JPMorgan said JPMD was available to institutional clients on Base, with near real-time transfers between EVM-compatible wallets, round-the-clock settlement and a design meant for smart contracts on public chains. Mastercard said in the same release that it was working with Kinexys to bring JPM Coin to its Mastercard Token Network. No date was given.
“The next evolution of digital money is here,” said Lauren Abendschein, vice president of institutional sales at Coinbase, in that release.
A second public venue followed on paper. On 7 January 2026, Decrypt reported that Kinexys and Digital Asset planned to bring JPMD to the Canton Network in stages across 2026. The first stage builds the technical and commercial groundwork to issue, transfer and redeem the token; later ones may add blockchain deposit accounts. “This collaboration moves the industry forward in transacting on public blockchains,” Naveen Mallela, global co-head of Kinexys, told Decrypt. Whether any Canton stage has gone live is not clear from the sources available on Monday.
Canton is also where the DTCC is putting securities on chain, as we reported in our piece on the DTCC tokenization service and its 25 securities on Canton and Besu. If the Ethereum plan goes ahead, JPM Coin would sit on Base, Ethereum and, later, Canton.
Who can use JPMD, and why an Ethereum wallet is not enough
The product page is written for corporates, financial institutions and payment service providers. Whether a client can use the service is decided by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. and its affiliates, and it may not be offered in every country. Only vetted, approved counterparties can take part.
ETHNews put it in practical terms: Ethereum wallet compatibility alone gives no access to JPMD, and retail users cannot assume they can buy it on decentralised exchanges. Eligible institutions use blockchain deposit accounts, and every transfer stays subject to the bank’s onboarding, compliance and eligibility checks.
One operational quirk remains. According to the product page, moving funds between ordinary demand deposit accounts and blockchain deposit accounts stops for three hours every Saturday, from 3 to 6 p.m. EST. The page says an enhancement is under development, without a date. Transfers on the network itself run at all hours.
For a retail reader, nothing changes in the near term. JPM Coin on Ethereum will not be something an ordinary wallet can use, and it is not a coin to trade.
Why MiCA does not cover JPM Coin, according to the EBA
European readers may ask why a bank can put a dollar token on Ethereum without a MiCA white paper. The answer comes from the European Banking Authority. In a report published on 12 December 2024, the EBA said tokenising a deposit “does not per se alter the fundamental nature of the claim” and so does not change its status as a deposit.
In other words, a tokenised deposit stays under banking law, and because it is already regulated, activity involving it is excluded from MiCA. An e-money token issued by a bank is a different case: it falls inside MiCA, with its reserve and disclosure duties. At the time, the EBA had found very few cases of tokenised deposits.
MiCA treats stablecoins strictly. E-money token issuers must be authorised, must hold reserves under set rules and cannot pay interest. Our guide to the MiCA regulation covers those duties. A deposit token sits outside that regime and inside bank supervision instead, which in the euro area means the ECB and national supervisors such as the ACPR in France and the Banca d’Italia.
JPMorgan’s product is a US dollar deposit at a US bank, and the bank has said nothing about access for EU or UK entities. The model still competes with the stablecoins EU regulators are tightening. ESMA has given crypto firms until January to stop offering stablecoins that are not MiCA compliant, and from 12 November the EBA takes over supervision of USDC, as we explained in our piece on the EBA and USDC’s reserves. A European bank that wants an on-chain euro has two routes: issue an e-money token under MiCA, or tokenise deposits under bank law.
We found no ESMA position on deposit tokens and no statement from French or Italian regulators about JPM Coin.
JPMorgan is not the only bank tokenising deposits
CoinDesk placed Monday’s report in a wider push. JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, along with more than a dozen other banks, plan a shared network for tokenised deposits. JPMorgan is also among more than 30 banks helping Swift define its blockchain-based ledger, though when Swift said in July that 17 banks, Citi and Wells Fargo among them, were preparing live pilots, JPMorgan was not on the list.
By contrast, JPM Coin is already on a public chain, Base, and according to Bloomberg is heading to a second one, with access controlled at the level of the token and the bank account.
What to watch: a product page update and a contract address
No date is attached to the Ethereum rollout, so the first signal will come from JPMorgan: an update to the JPM Coin product page, which still lists Base only, or a Kinexys release with an Ethereum contract address.
- Whether the Ethereum token is bridged from Base or issued separately, and whether it can settle the tokenised funds JPMorgan already runs on Ethereum.
- Progress on the Canton stages announced in January for 2026, and on the Mastercard Token Network integration, which still has no date.
- The US GENIUS Act on payment stablecoins takes effect on 18 January 2027.
- In the EU, ESMA’s January deadline for non-MiCA stablecoins and the EBA’s supervision of USDC from 12 November.
The next fixed date on that list is 12 November, one year to the day after JPMD became available on Base.