Blockchain Opens the Door to the Financial System: The Era of On-Chain Bank Deposits Begins

2025: A Turning Point - Bank Deposits Land on the Blockchain

On-chain real-world assets (RWA) have so far been limited to areas such as government bonds, money market funds, and structured products. However, in December 2025, a major event dramatically changed this landscape. JPMorgan Chase & Co. launched a bank deposit-based token product called JPMD, which began full operation on Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 network, Base.

This is no longer just a test; institutions such as Mastercard, Coinbase, and B2C2 participated on Base, supporting actual payment activities. Whitelisted customers can now make on-chain payments, margin settlements, and collateral transfers, marking the first time that deposits from large global banks are operated within a public blockchain environment.

Scale Changes Everything: Trillions of Dollars Flow into On-Chain Markets

Why does this movement hold such symbolic significance for the industry? Because the numbers tell the story.

According to JPMorgan Chase’s 2024 Form 10-K annual report, the total deposits as of December 31, 2024, stood at $2.406 trillion. Just the deposit volume of this single company surpasses the entire current on-chain RWA market. In contrast, tokenized government bonds and money market funds remain in the hundreds of billions of dollars range.

From a broader perspective, the Federal Reserve’s H.8 statistical data as of December 10, 2025, shows the total deposits of the US commercial banking system at $18.5 trillion. Even a small portion of this enormous fund moving into blockchain payments has the potential to surpass the current on-chain asset market size.

Why Deposit Tokens Will Surpass Stablecoins

In the banking world, deposit tokens and stablecoins are similar but not the same. Traditional stablecoins exist outside the financial system and face structural issues related to issuer creditworthiness and reserve transparency.

Deposit tokens, on the other hand, are different. They represent a direct claim on commercial bank deposits and are naturally integrated into existing regulatory, accounting, and auditing frameworks. Being within the scope of traditional financial regulation, they offer a level of trust that institutional investors find significantly higher.

In JPMD’s case, as indicated by disclosures on November 12, 2025, it is not merely a technological experiment but has been implemented as a 24/7 on-chain settlement mechanism. The fund based on bank deposits has reached a stage where it performs actual settlement functions on a public blockchain.

Emergence of Revenue Assets: The Perfect On-Chain Financial System

In addition to the completion of the settlement layer, the lack of revenue-generating assets has been a blind spot in on-chain funding structures. This issue was resolved on December 15, 2025.

JPMorgan Stanley’s asset management division announced its first tokenized money market fund, My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), explicitly issued on the public Ethereum network.

MONY is a private fund accessible only to qualified investors, and it invests solely in US Treasuries and repurchase agreements collateralized by government bonds. JPMorgan Chase provided an initial investment of $100 million in equity, enabling investors to hold USD revenue assets directly on-chain within a fully compliant framework.

Data Proves It: From Pilot to Full Operation

Data from RWA.xyz indicates the market’s maturity. As of December 25, 2025, the distributed asset value of on-chain RWAs reached $19.1 billion, with a total asset value of $414.66 billion, and 592,638 asset holders participating in this ecosystem.

Particularly notable is the government debt asset sector. The total on-chain value of tokenized government bonds is $9 billion, covering 62 assets and 59,214 holders, with an annualized 7-day yield of 3.82%. It now functions similarly to traditional cash management tools.

Inevitability of Financial System Efficiency

This trend is not driven by technology for its own sake but is a practical choice for the financial system.

Within the $18.5 trillion of US commercial bank deposits, institutions facing challenges such as improving settlement efficiency, operating 24/7, and increasing collateral reuse naturally consider blockchain as a viable option.

JPMD and MONY are not isolated products but components of a series of integrated on-chain financial pathways. Deposit tokens provide a 24/7 settlement cash layer, tokenized money market funds support compliant, low-risk USD revenue assets, and expanding government bond pools offer collateral and liquidity—these outline the next-generation financial infrastructure.

The series of developments from November to December 2025 clearly marks a turning point. Real-world assets evolve from “tokenizable objects” to “components of a continuously operated financial system on public blockchains,” gradually integrating into institutional-level clearing, cash management, and asset allocation logic. This marks the beginning of a new era for the entire industry.