A group of the world’s largest banks and asset managers said on September 1, 2026 they are teaming up
to issue a jointly-branded dollar stablecoin, targeting a 2027 launch and a market that has grown to
more than
$312 billion — but is still overwhelmingly controlled by two crypto-native issuers.
According to CoinDesk
and reporting summarized on Yahoo Finance,
the consortium includes Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, Barclays,
BNP Paribas, Santander, UBS, MUFG and TD Bank, alongside a still-forming roster of asset managers.
The token is expected to launch on public blockchains — not a closed bank network — and start with U.S.
dollars before expanding into other G7 currencies.
The move is significant less because banks are dabbling in crypto (they have been for a decade) and
more because they are choosing to compete on the same rails as Tether and Circle rather than
retreat to walled gardens like JPMorgan’s Kinexys
platform. That is the real signal.
What the banks are chasing
The competitive pull is straightforward. Two issuers already own most of the market.
| Stablecoin | Issuer | Market Cap | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| USDT | Tether | $183.3B | 58.6% |
| USDC | Circle | $73.4B | 23.5% |
| DAI | MakerDAO | $4.6B | 1.5% |
| USDe | Ethena | $4.2B | 1.3% |
| USD1 | World Liberty Financial | $4.2B | 1.3% |
| Total market | $312.8B | 100% |
USDT and USDC together account for roughly 82% of the market. Neither is issued by a U.S. bank.
Both earn their revenue by holding customer dollars, parking them in Treasury bills and short-duration
paper, and keeping the interest. Circle, which went public in 2026, reported the majority of its
revenue from precisely that carry trade.
Every dollar that clears through USDT or USDC is a dollar the banking system did not touch. Multiply
that by cross-border payments, tokenized-collateral posting, and stablecoin-settled trading, and the
banks see a payment rail rebuilding without them at the center of it.
Why now: the GENIUS Act
The trigger is regulatory. The
Guiding and
Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act — the GENIUS Act — was signed into law
by President Trump on July 18, 2025, creating the first federal
framework for U.S. dollar payment stablecoins.
The mechanics matter here. The Act:
- Requires payment stablecoins to be backed 1:1 by U.S. dollars or short-duration low-risk assets,
- Creates a carve-out from SEC and CFTC jurisdiction for compliant tokens,
- Allows insured banks to issue payment stablecoins through OCC-supervised subsidiaries, and
- Prohibits issuers from paying interest directly to token holders.
Together, those rules give banks a lane. They can issue a token, hold the reserves, and earn the
carry — but they cannot pay depositors for parking cash in the token. That last provision is what makes
the consortium possible and dangerous at the same time.
The $6 trillion question
Ask why a bank would build a product that competes with its own deposit base and you get the
Moynihan answer. Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan has said publicly that if lawmakers
were to allow stablecoin issuers to pay interest, he would treat that as an existential threat and
enter the business himself — a warning he tied to roughly
$6 trillion
of deposits that could migrate out of the traditional banking system.
Under the GENIUS Act as written, no such interest is permitted. But the point is defensive: the
banks would rather own the on-ramp than concede it. If the rules ever loosen — the way money-market
fund rules loosened in the 1980s — the incumbent that already owns the token wins.
Why JPMorgan is not in the room
JPMorgan Chase is the most visible absentee. The bank has spent years building its own on-chain
settlement platform, rebranded from Onyx to
Kinexys, and
running JPM Coin as an intra-bank deposit token. That is a different bet: closed, permissioned, and
aimed at institutional clients moving billions across accounts, not at the open crypto ecosystem where
USDT and USDC live.
The consortium’s decision to issue on public chains is therefore a fork in the road for large-bank
crypto strategy. One path — JPMorgan’s — is to keep the plumbing inside the bank. The other — the
consortium’s — is to concede that liquidity has already moved and to build where it already is.
What to watch next
- OCC rulemaking. The GENIUS Act still requires implementing regulations from the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency governing bank-subsidiary issuers. Timing of the final
rule shapes the 2027 launch window. - Circle’s response. Publicly-traded Circle, whose 2026 IPO priced the company as
a pure-play issuer, now faces its first well-capitalized incumbent challenger. Watch how it
repositions distribution partnerships. - Non-U.S. currencies. The consortium has signaled ambitions for a euro and other
G7 currency tokens. That puts it on collision course with the ECB’s own digital-euro work and
MiCA-licensed issuers in the EU. - Deposit competition. If any bank ever gets permission to pay yield on a
stablecoin — even indirectly, via a linked savings product — the deposit franchise math changes
overnight.
The Sept. 1 announcement did not launch a product. It committed the country’s largest financial
institutions to defending their turf on the terms the crypto market has already set. The stablecoin
race is no longer about crypto companies pretending to be banks. It is about banks deciding whether
they are willing to look like crypto companies.
Sources
- CoinDesk — Citi, Goldman, other global banks and asset managers team up on stablecoin venture (Sept 1, 2026)
- Yahoo Finance — Twelve Major Banks Are Building a Stablecoin on Public Chains
- CoinMarketCap — Stablecoin sector rankings
- GENIUS Act — statute summary
- JPMorgan — Kinexys (Onyx) blockchain platform
Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.