JPMorgan recently issued $50 million in US commercial paper for Galaxy Digital in Solana, with Coinbase and Franklin Templeton as buyers.
The bank created an on-chain USCP token and settled both issuance and redemption cash flows in USDC rather than bank wire. Both transaction issuance and servicing were performed entirely on blockchain rails.
As a template, JPMorgan plans to expand it to more issuers, investors, and security types in 2026.
Presentations are made according to a pattern. Headlines of on-chain issuance by institutional investors recur every few months, including Siemens’ €300 million digital bond, Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon’s tokenized money market fund, and BlackRock’s BUIDL exceeding $2.85 billion for the first time.
Each is presented as a breakthrough. The challenge is to separate structural advances from proof-of-concept theater. The value lies in tracking what actually happens, such as whether asset types, settlement finalities, counterparties, permissions, and design choices change future issuance behavior or are limited to one-off pilots.
Where the JPMorgan and Solana deal actually lies
JPMorgan has experimented with tokenized debt before, but that experiment was done on private infrastructure. In April 2024, the Bank facilitated an offering of municipal securities to the City of Quincy on a permitted platform. The company issued commercial paper to OCBC based on its own distributed ledger.
While the Solana transaction is not the first tokenized bond transaction, it is the first time JPMorgan’s stack enters the public chain with real-world corporate paper, brand name issuers, and buyers also active in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
The transition from permissioned to public infrastructure is important because it changes who can participate and how assets move.
Permitted platforms restrict access to pre-approved entities and keep payments within a controlled environment. Public chains expose tokenized assets to broader liquidity, combinability with other on-chain instruments, and integration into crypto-native collateral and lending protocols.
JPMorgan’s transactions intentionally cross that line and are settled in USDC on Solana rather than bank deposits on a private ledger.
The partnership between R3 and Solana Foundation reinforces this trend. R3’s Corda platform already supports approximately $10 billion in tokenized assets for clients including Euroclear, HSBC, and Bank of America.
Integrating Solana as a public chain option for tokenized stocks and funds shows that institutions are treating public blockchains as production infrastructure, not just sandbox environments.
Tokenized debt and cash situation in 2024/25
Tokenized treasury and money market funds reached approximately $7.4 billion by July 2025, an increase of approximately 80% since the beginning of the year, led by BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Janus Henderson’s Anemoi products.
These tokens are increasingly serving not only as high-yield cash parking but also as collateral for cryptocurrency derivatives and loans. According to rwa.xyz data, tokenized U.S. Treasuries will exceed $9 billion in 2025, with BlackRock’s BUIDL alone reaching a total of $1 billion by mid-year and increasing to about $2.85 billion by October.
Additionally, Circle’s USYC recently surpassed $1 billion in assets thanks to its partnership with Binance, which uses tokenized fund shares as collateral for transactions.
Most of its growth is in funds and collateral tokens that reside within the walled garden.
BUIDL is limited to qualified institutions and is primarily used as collateral for institutions or large crypto exchanges. Although Franklin’s BENJI Fund is registered under the 1940 Act and allows investors to contribute funds to USDC, shares in the fund are still restricted by mutual fund regulations.
Goldman and BNY Mellon’s tokenized MMF initiative allows financial institutions to subscribe and redeem via tokenized rails while maintaining official records and most payments on traditional infrastructure.
JPMorgan and Galaxy’s commercial paper contracts sit at different intersections. That means mainstream corporate borrowers will issue on the public chain, settling on crypto-native dollar products, and investors will span both traditional finance and digital asset platforms.
This combination is rare enough to warrant scrutiny.
Separate headline PR from actual progress
Reading tokenized issuance announcements requires a repeatable evaluation framework.
Five questions will reveal whether your trade changes the market structure or remains a one-time experiment.
First, what is an asset? Are blockchain tokens legal collateral itself, or just a representation?
Siemens’ €300 million bond will be natively issued as a digital security without the use of paper certificates. Although JPMorgan/Galaxy commercial paper is traditional commercial paper from a legal perspective, the lifecycle events of issuance, servicing, and eventual redemption are reflected in Solana through the USCP token.
This distinction determines whether blockchain records are authoritative or auxiliary.
Second, how will the cash leg be settled and where is the finality? Most of the experiments in 2024 and 2025 will be settled in central bank money on a permissioned ledger, or in fiat currency via traditional rails.
The JPMorgan-Solana transaction is one of the first to be issued and redeemed in crypto-native dollar instruments (USDC) on a public chain for mainstream corporate borrowers.
This creates payment finality on-chain rather than relying on off-chain payment confirmations.
Third, who gets to hold or move the assets? The $7.4 billion in tokenized Treasury and MMF products are held by professional or crypto-savvy investors, with limited mainstream circulation.
BUIDL is limited to qualified institutions. Although Franklin’s BENJI Fund is a registered fund under the 1940 Act, it is still subject to mutual fund regulations. The permission structure determines whether tokens can flow freely or remain gated by investor certification, KYC, or platform restrictions.
Fourth, can tokens be reused as collateral? Does DLT solve a real pain point?
JPMorgan’s Tokenized Collateral Network demonstrates the use of tokenized money market fund shares as on-chain collateral, with benefits such as near-instant repo settlements, atomic delivery-to-payment, and improved collateral mobilization across fragmented silos.
IOSCO’s 2025 Tokenization Report notes that only a small number of tokenized MMFs have been used as collateral for cryptocurrency transactions to date, specifically citing BUIDL as one example.
The question is whether the token will unlock new collateral velocity or replicate existing workflows on a different infrastructure.
Fifth, will this agreement lead to enabling policy changes or will it depend on regulatory tolerance?
In late 2025, the OCC issued Interpretive Letter No. 1188, confirming that national banks may engage in “risk-free principal” cryptocurrency transactions as part of their banking operations.
Interpretive Letter 1186 clarified that banks can hold native tokens such as ETH and SOL on their balance sheets for the purpose of paying network fees and testing blockchain platforms.
In January 2025, the SEC rescinded Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, which forced banks to treat stored cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets.
This combination of regulations makes it more likely that large banks will use public chains and tokenized MMFs or government bonds as collateral and settlement assets in production environments, rather than restricting experimentation to permitted environments.
Application of the framework to JPMorgan transactions
JPMorgan/Galaxy Commercial Paper scores: This asset is not a native digital security, but a traditional commercial paper with on-chain lifecycle mirroring.
The finality of payments in USDC on Solana removes dependence on bank transfers but introduces dependence on stablecoin issuers. Counterparties include Galaxy Digital as the issuer and Coinbase and Franklin Templeton as the buyers, both companies with both traditional financial and crypto infrastructure.
The token’s permission structure is unclear from public reports. Whether it can be freely transferred on Solana or restricted to authorized owners will determine whether it can flow into broader DeFi protocols or remain closed-loop.
The possibility of collateral reuse for this transaction depends on whether USCP tokens can be pledged as margin or used for on-chain lending. JPMorgan’s existing tokenized collateral network suggests the bank is building towards that capability, but the Solana CP issuance has yet to demonstrate it.
The policy background is supportive. OCC guidance allows banks to intermediate cryptocurrency transactions and hold gas tokens, and the SEC’s revocation of SAB 121 removes custodial accounting barriers.
Therefore, the Solana transaction will have a reduced regulatory burden compared to 2024.
What will actually change in 2026?
Recurring headlines about institutional tokenization pose a pattern recognition problem.
While each announcement is framed as innovative, most are still limited to asset classes with proof-of-concept scale, permissioned platforms, or already deep traditional infrastructure.
The JPMorgan-Solana deal will step into public chain territory with a prominent corporate issuer and USDC settlement, but the commercial paper market is already highly liquid and efficient.
The question is not whether tokenization is technically feasible, but whether tokenization changes issuance behavior.
The test in 2026 will be whether tokenized debt and cash products begin to replace traditional workflows at scale.
This requires four conditions: regulatory clarity around custody and settlement finality, and interoperability standards that allow tokens to be moved between platforms without fragmentation.
Additionally, sufficient liquidity in on-chain venues is required to compete with traditional order books, as well as proven collateral velocity benefits to justify the operational overhead of running dual infrastructure.
The OCC and SEC actions in 2025 address the first condition. R3’s Solana integration and JPMorgan’s public chain expansion signal progress on the second point. The third and fourth remain open questions.
The nearly $9 billion in tokenized government bonds represents a rounding error in the $28 trillion government bond market.
BUIDL’s $1.8 billion makes sense from a cryptocurrency perspective, but is insignificant in global financial markets.
Tokenized products must prove to be truly great collateral and payment stacks, not just wrapper products.
JPMorgan’s clear intention to expand the Solana template to more issuers, investors and security types in 2026 suggests the bank views the deal as infrastructure building rather than PR.
Whether that proves accurate will depend on adoption beyond the initial crypto-native investor population and whether the tokens can be reused as collateral in production lending and derivatives markets.
The framework outlined above provides a way to evaluate each subsequent announcement against those criteria, separating structural advances from one-off experiments that generate headlines but do not change market behavior.
