Tokenized money

Tokenized money is an umbrella term, and the structural difference between its families lies in who issues it and whose liability it is. A stablecoin is the liability of a private, non-bank issuer, backed by reserves such as Treasury bills, for example USDC by Circle or USDT by Tether. A tokenized deposit is the digital representation of a deposit at a regulated commercial bank: it stays on the bank's balance sheet, with the same credit quality, supervision and depositor protection. A CBDC is central bank money in digital form, the lowest-risk monetary asset. From that distinction follow regulatory treatment and the singleness of money, the principle that a euro is worth the same whatever its form.

It is the payment leg of the whole tokenized economy: settling the purchase of a tokenized asset needs money on-chain too, which enables atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement. It promises 24/7, programmable payments at lower cross-border cost. In the EU, MiCA frames stablecoins as e-money tokens (EMT) and asset-referenced tokens (ART), while tokenized deposits remain within the regulated banking perimeter.

A real example is JPMorgan's Kinexys platform, which has processed institutional payments with JPM Coin on a private chain since 2020 and in 2025 launched a deposit token on the Base network. Citi Token Services offers real-time transfers between New York, London and Hong Kong. A shared tokenized-deposit network operated by The Clearing House, with several US banks, has an announced target to begin in the first half of 2027.