A bank’s token on a public chain
What does a bank deposit look like when it lives on a blockchain? Bank JPMorgan Chase offers one answer with JPM Coin, which its product page describes as a deposit token issued on Ethereum and on Base, an Ethereum layer 2 network. The tokens are backed by US dollar deposits held in JPMorgan accounts, and “only vetted, approved counterparties can participate,” the page says.
The page links both contracts. Read directly from public nodes at 05:39 UTC on November 10, 2026, the Base contract, named JPMD and set to two decimal places, reported a total supply of 1,001,000 tokens, while the Ethereum contract reported none. Block explorer Basescan showed the same supply and counted two holders.
How it differs from a stablecoin
The Bank for International Settlements set the two models side by side in a BIS Bulletin of April 11, 2023, by Rodney Garratt and Hyun Song Shin. A stablecoin circulates like a bearer instrument, so whoever receives it holds a claim on the issuer, and its price can drift from par.
A tokenized deposit doesn’t pass a claim along. The sender’s bank debits its customer, the receiver’s bank credits its own, and the two banks settle in central bank money, which the authors see as the feature that keeps every payment at face value.
Central banks have since tried the idea with real money. The BIS page for Project Agorá, read on November 10, 2026, reports real-value testing in July 2026 in which 28 financial institutions and central banks completed 30 transactions in 17 scenarios. They totaled about CHF 800,000, each between CHF 9,000 and CHF 125,000, and took about 80 seconds on average from start to settlement.
Where the law puts it
The US, the EU and the UK all keep these tokens inside the rules for bank deposits.
| Jurisdiction | Treatment | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| US | Excluded from the definition of a payment stablecoin, which leaves out “a deposit … including a deposit recorded using distributed ledger technology” | GENIUS Act, section 2(22) |
| EU | Outside MiCA, which does not apply to deposits; recital 9 says such assets stay under existing law “regardless of the technology used” | MiCA, Article 2(4) and recital 9 |
| UK | Banks may offer them inside the deposit-taking entity, meeting FSCS rules for retail customers; stablecoins and e-money should come from a separate company with distinct branding | PRA letter of May 18, 2026 |
The US text is section 2 of the GENIUS Act, the EU text is MiCA, and the British position sits in a Dear CEO letter from the Prudential Regulation Authority. The PRA notes that standard-setters have not yet settled on a definition.
Two ways to get it wrong
The first is calling it a stablecoin. JPMorgan’s FAQ says plainly that JPM Coin is “not a cryptocurrency or a stablecoin,” and the US and EU texts above keep deposits out of their stablecoin rules.
The second is trusting the name on a token. The same page warns that tokens “with the same or similar name, but at different contract addresses, are not affiliated with J.P. Morgan.” A copycat can give its own smart contract the same name, so compare the contract address with the one the issuing bank publishes before treating a token as its deposit.