Wall Street's Favorite Bank Just Put Its Dollars on Ethereum's Playground 🏦

JPMorgan Chase, the world's biggest bank by market capitalization, is expanding its JPM Coin deposit token to Ethereum for eligible institutional clients, according to a Bloomberg report on October 19. The token represents US dollar deposits held at JPMorgan and enables clients to transfer funds within seconds on a 24/7 basis, a contrast to traditional bank wires that operate only during business hours and can take days to settle.

Emma Landriault, global head of Kinexys Labs at JPMorgan, said the bank selected Ethereum for its established depth of onchain liquidity and its existing use among institutional clients. Landriault described the expansion as part of "a year of further convergence between Wall Street and crypto," adding that crypto companies could use the token for blockchain payments, while financial institutions could use it to settle trades or post collateral. Although JPM Coin is issued on public networks, access remains restricted to approved institutional participants and is not available for retail purchase.

The move follows JPMorgan's November 2025 launch of JPM Coin on Base, an Ethereum layer-2 network built by Coinbase, and comes after the bank said in January that it planned to bring the token to the Canton Network. Landriault did not specify when the token would become available on Ethereum. JPMorgan also previously issued two tokenized money-market funds on Ethereum in December 2025 and May 2026. Cointelegraph and CoinDesk both contacted JPMorgan for additional details but did not receive a response before publication.

JPMorgan's private blockchain network, Kinexys, already handles more than $7 billion in daily transactions, a small fraction of the bank's $12 trillion daily payments business. Approximately $50 billion in crypto assets are currently locked in Ethereum-based applications, according to DeFiLlama. Matthew Dawson, co-founder of Ethereum Institutional, called the expansion "a clear signal that institutional finance is moving onto public, verifiable infrastructure." Separately, Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 12,535 ETH worth about $30 million to its holdings, bringing its total to 6,041,481 ETH valued at roughly $14.3 billion at a reference price of $2,365 per coin, or 4.9% of Ethereum's 122.1 million token supply.

JPMorgan is also among more than 30 banks helping Swift, the interbank messaging service, define the features and governance of its blockchain-based ledger, and is part of a US consortium of more than a dozen banks, including Citi, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, planning a shared network for tokenized deposits. Kinexys co-head Naveen Mallela has previously described deposit tokens as "a compelling alternative" to stablecoins because they "can be yield-bearing," positioning JPMorgan's offering against a consortium of over 100 companies, including Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard, that launched its own dollar stablecoin last month.