Institutional Pivot: JPMorgan Moves Core Tokenized Products to Public Blockchain
In a landmark shift for institutional finance, JPMorgan has officially migrated its primary tokenized deposit product, JPM Coin (now ticker JPMD), from its internal, private blockchain to Coinbase’s public Layer 2 network, Base. The announcement, confirmed on Thursday, December 18, 2025, marks the first time a globally systemically significant bank (G-SIB) has fully integrated its regulated deposit-taking business with public blockchain infrastructure. This transition represents a major evolution of the bank’s Kinexys unit (formerly Onyx), moving it beyond the “walled garden” of private experimentation and into the broader on-chain economy. By leveraging Base, J.P. Morgan aims to provide its institutional clients with 24/7 settlement capabilities and real-time liquidity that is directly interoperable with the existing crypto-native ecosystem.
The Migration to Base: Bridging Deposits and DeFi
The migration to Base is driven by increasing demand from corporate and institutional clients who wish to use bank-backed deposits as collateral within decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and public trading venues. Unlike traditional stablecoins, JPMD tokens represent direct claims on existing bank funds and have the potential to be interest-bearing, offering a regulated and yield-generating alternative to USDT or USDC. To maintain its strict regulatory standards, JPMorgan has implemented a “permissioned-on-public” model; while the tokens reside on the Base network, they can only be transferred between whitelisted wallets that have completed the bank’s rigorous KYC and AML onboarding. This structure allows the bank to maintain control over compliance while benefiting from the low fees, high throughput, and 24/7 availability of Coinbase’s public network.
Initial test transactions on the public network were successfully completed by a consortium including Mastercard, B2C2, and Coinbase itself, demonstrating the system’s ability to handle near-instant issuance and redemption of tokenized cash. J.P. Morgan executives noted that the integration of the bank’s trillion-dollar payments engine with Base is a defensive move to protect its core deposit business as global trade increasingly moves on-chain. By providing a “secure” version of digital cash that integrates seamlessly with traditional banking APIs, JPMorgan is positioning itself as the primary liquidity provider for the next generation of digital capital markets.
Expanding the Public Footprint: The MONY Fund and Solana Debt
The migration of JPM Coin is part of a broader, multi-chain offensive by J.P. Morgan in late 2025. Concurrent with the Base launch, the bank’s asset management arm debuted its first tokenized money market fund, the “My OnChain Net Yield Fund” (MONY), on the public ETH blockchain. viewded with $100 million of the bank’s own capital, the fund allows qualified investors to earn Treasury-backed yields directly through their blockchain addresses. Furthermore, just days prior, the bank facilitated a $50 million commercial paper issuance for Galaxy Digital on the Solana network, settled exclusively in USDC. These moves collectively signal that J.P. Morgan no longer views private ledgers as the endgame for institutional finance, but rather as a stepping stone toward a unified, public, and interoperable global financial system.
