JPM Coin Goes Live on Ethereum as J.P. Morgan Adds a Second Public Chain for Its Deposit Token
Kinexys says J.P. Morgan's institutional clients can now move the USD deposit token JPMD on Ethereum as well as Base, where it launched in November 2025. Only vetted, approved counterparties can hold it.
By Lucas Ferreira, Journalist, Crypto Infrastructure
Kinexys by J.P. Morgan said on 19 October 2026 that JPM Coin (ticker JPMD), the bank's USD-denominated deposit token, is now live on Ethereum, the Layer 1 blockchain network. The token is available to J.P. Morgan's institutional clients. They can now move money on Ethereum as well as on Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network where JPM Coin launched in November 2025.
The move gives the bank's deposit token a second public blockchain. The announcement is about where existing institutional clients can use JPMD. It does not open the token to retail buyers or to an exchange market.
What a deposit token is, and who can hold it
JPM Coin is not a stablecoin. J.P. Morgan's product page calls it "a bank-issued deposit token — not a cryptocurrency or a stablecoin." Each token is backed by USD deposits held in J.P. Morgan bank accounts, and it carries the credit risk profile of commercial bank money. Clients convert cash into JPMD and back through what the bank calls its BDA framework. They can redeem tokens to USD at any time, with no lock-up period, the bank says.
The token runs on public infrastructure, but participation is closed: "only vetted, approved counterparties" can transact, according to the product page. The release says JPMD supports peer-to-peer transfers between institutional clients within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem, including Base and Ethereum. The page also warns that tokens with the same or a similar name at other contract addresses are not affiliated with J.P. Morgan.
Why Ethereum
J.P. Morgan points to Ethereum's "established depth of onchain liquidity and tokenized assets." Its stated aim is to put bank-issued cash on the same network as the assets, collateral and counterparties that its clients already use. JPMD now sits on Ethereum alongside J.P. Morgan Asset Management's tokenized money market funds, which launched on the network earlier this year.
"Issuing JPM Coin first on Base and now on Ethereum is a meaningful step towards providing our institutional clients with multi-chain optionality for moving wholesale money across both the web3 and traditional finance ecosystems," said Emma Landriault, global head of Kinexys Labs. Matthew Dawson, co-founder of Ethereum Institutional, called the move "a clear signal that institutional finance is moving onto public, verifiable infrastructure."
The bank lists the institutional uses as cross-border payments, intraday liquidity transfers, posting on-chain collateral for securities transactions, and programmable payments.
Deposit tokens and the stablecoin market
The launch matters for competition with stablecoins. A dollar stablecoin is a claim on its issuer's reserve pool. JPMD is a claim on a J.P. Morgan deposit and stays inside the bank's existing compliance and risk frameworks. For institutions that want to settle on Ethereum without taking on non-bank issuer risk, it gives them a bank-money option on the same chain.
The permissioned design limits that option. A stablecoin can circulate freely among wallets. JPMD reaches only counterparties J.P. Morgan has approved, so its usefulness on Ethereum depends on how many of a client's trading partners are also onboarded.
What the announcement does not say
Kinexys says its platform has processed more than $4 trillion in cumulative transactions, averaging $7 billion a day. The bank calculates these figures from Kinexys internal data, and they cover the whole Kinexys platform, not JPMD alone. The release does not give JPMD's outstanding supply or Ethereum transaction volume. It also does not name the clients using the token on Ethereum or say what network fees clients will bear.