Two announcements published one day apart tell the same story. On 20 October 2026, Fintechnews Switzerland reported that J.P. Morgan is making JPM Coin, its dollar-denominated deposit token, available on Ethereum for its institutional clients. The day before, on 19 October, a Citi Research note presented the Aave protocol as possible infrastructure for financing tokenised assets. In both cases, major banks are looking towards public blockchains, and no longer only towards private networks.

JPM Coin moves from Base to Ethereum

According to Fintechnews Switzerland, the operation is being led by Kinexys, J.P. Morgan's blockchain unit. Ethereum becomes the token's second public blockchain, after its launch in November 2025 on Base, a layer 2 network built on top of Ethereum. Clients can now transfer JPM Coin on both networks and hold "on-chain" liquidity alongside the assets, collateral and counterparties they already work with.

The bank justifies this choice by the depth of liquidity and the volume of tokenised assets present on Ethereum. It says that large institutions active in crypto assets and in tokenised real-world assets (RWA) are increasingly looking for on-chain liquidity issued by recognised financial institutions and compatible with their existing deposit products. Still according to the source, J.P. Morgan Asset Management launched tokenised money market funds on the same network earlier this year.

In practical terms, the token enables direct transfers between institutional clients within the EVM ecosystem, the set of blockchains compatible with Ethereum's software, including Base and Ethereum. J.P. Morgan says this reduces friction in digital asset transactions. Clients could also run programmable treasury functions from their own wallets; the source keeps this in the conditional.

On the figures, the bank states that the Kinexys platform has processed more than $4,000 billion in cumulative transactions since its creation, with an average daily volume of $7 billion. These amounts are published by J.P. Morgan itself; the source specifies neither the creation date used nor the period over which the daily average is calculated, and they concern Kinexys as a whole, not JPM Coin alone.

Two statements accompany the announcement. For Matthew Dawson, co-founder of Ethereum Institutional, "this is a clear signal that institutional finance is moving onto public, verifiable infrastructure". Emma Landriault, global head of Kinexys Labs, says that tokenised financial infrastructure "is no longer theoretical" and that it is "already restructuring liquidity, settlement and digital asset flows".

Deposit token or bank stablecoin: the difference

JPM Coin is presented as a deposit token, not as a stablecoin. The nuance lies in the nature of what the token represents. A deposit token is the digital form of a bank deposit: it remains a claim on the issuing bank, here J.P. Morgan, and fits within its usual deposit products, which is precisely what the bank emphasises. A stablecoin is, in its usual model, a token issued by an entity that backs it with reserves to stabilise its value, and that circulates more widely.

This distinction is a general frame of reference; the source details neither the legal status of JPM Coin nor the conditions of client access. It nevertheless helps to understand the bank's argument: offering institutions an on-chain currency that remains bank money, on a public network where tokenised assets already sit.

Citi Research sees Aave as a tool for collateral mobility

The Citi Research note, signed by analysts Peter Christiansen and Aditi Balachandran and titled "Aave – Bringing Real World Finance Onchain", is reported by Journal du Coin. It sets out a three-stage reasoning: tokenisation determines which assets take the form of tokens, stablecoins are then used for settlement, and protocols such as Aave organise the financing of these assets and their use as collateral. Citi speaks of "collateral mobility".

The idea is familiar from traditional finance, for example with securities-backed loans: obtaining liquidity by pledging an asset as collateral rather than selling it. The note cites money market funds, private credit, Treasury securities and, eventually, equities. It mentions Aave V4, Horizon and the GHO stablecoin among the initiatives bringing collateral, liquidity and financing closer together. With Horizon, eligible investors can deposit certain tokenised assets as collateral to borrow stablecoins, without giving up their investment. This theme of collateral put back into circulation is not unique to Aave: Nasdaq also advocates a comparable reading.

Journal du Coin highlights an important point: this is an analysis of the protocol's potential, not the announcement of a partnership or an investment by Citi. The note does not claim that Aave is already replacing traditional infrastructure. The role envisaged remains subject to the integration of assets and to appropriate risk parameters.

The limits the sources point out

A tokenised fund retains its legal and economic characteristics, even when a decentralised protocol accepts it as collateral. Access conditions, transfer restrictions and holders' rights remain decisive. The amount that can be borrowed depends on the value of the collateral and the protocol's limits; a fall in that value can trigger a liquidation, that is, the sale of part of the collateral to repay the debt. Finally, growth in deposits or borrowing is not enough to prove lasting institutional adoption: sufficient liquidity and sound collateral management are also needed.

What this signals for tokenisation in Switzerland

What follows is analysis. Neither source mentions any Swiss player or says anything about the Swiss framework. They do, however, describe a development that the Swiss tokenisation hub is following closely: major banks are no longer content with closed networks, they are placing bank money on public blockchains, and bank analysts are examining decentralised finance protocols as financing tools, and no longer just as crypto lending platforms.

For issuers of tokenised assets, platforms and banks active in this field, the question raised by Citi's note is concrete: a tokenised asset becomes more useful if it can serve as collateral, and not only if it circulates faster. The availability of on-chain bank money, such as JPM Coin, points in the same direction by providing the "cash" leg of transactions. It remains to be seen how quickly these uses will move from the stage of announcements and analysis to that of measurable volumes, which the sources do not yet allow us to say. The same dynamic can also be seen in the arrival of stablecoins in payments, all the way to Japanese banks.

Sources

  • Fintechnews Switzerland: « J.P. Morgan Brings Its Tokenised Dollar Deposits to Ethereum »
  • Journal du Coin: « Tokenisation : Citi voit dans Aave un acteur clé du financement sur blockchain »