JPMorgan is preparing to make JPM Coin, its tokenized representation of dollar deposits, available to institutional clients on Ethereum. The move would extend the bank’s public-blockchain strategy beyond Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network developed by Coinbase, and its private Kinexys infrastructure.
Emma Landriault, head of Kinexys Labs, said Ethereum was selected because it offers deeper liquidity than competing networks and is already used by institutional clients. JPMorgan expects the broader availability to serve crypto companies seeking blockchain-based payments and financial firms using digital assets to settle trades or support tokenized assets.
The timing of the Ethereum rollout has not been disclosed. JPMorgan had previously indicated that it planned to expand JPM Coin beyond Base to the Canton Network, making Ethereum the latest addition to a multichain expansion. The bank’s own materials describe JPM Coin as a bank-issued deposit token, rather than a cryptocurrency or stablecoin, with tokens backed by dollar deposits held at JPMorgan.
JPMorgan said in April that Kinexys had processed more than $3 trillion in transactions since its launch and was averaging more than $5 billion daily; the latest reporting put daily activity above $7 billion. JPM Coin is designed for institutional uses including payments, collateral posting, settlement and reconciliation on public blockchains.
The move comes as banks develop several competing approaches to putting regulated money on shared ledgers. Swift said in July that its blockchain-based ledger was ready for initial use and that 17 banks from six continents were preparing live pilots using tokenized deposits for round-the-clock cross-border payments. JPMorgan was involved in defining the ledger’s features and governance but was not among the 17 institutions named for those initial pilots.
Ethereum’s role in institutional finance has also expanded beyond payments. JPMorgan’s Kinexys materials identify Ethereum and other public networks as potential venues for tokenized assets, while nearly $50 billion in crypto assets were locked in Ethereum-based applications at the time of the latest reporting. JPMorgan’s Ethereum deployment will therefore place a bank-backed deposit token on a network already used for both financial applications and tokenized assets, although the bank has not announced when clients will be able to access it.