sofiUSD and JPM Coin are both dollar tokens issued by regulated U.S. banks, but they answer the question "who is allowed to hold this?" in opposite ways. sofiUSD, launched by SoFi Bank, N.A. in December 2025, is a public, permissionless token that anyone can hold and transfer on Ethereum and Solana. JPM Coin, the deposit token from JPMorgan's Kinexys unit, is permissioned: only whitelisted institutional clients can hold or move it, even on the public chains where it now lives.
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That single design choice (open access versus a closed whitelist) cascades into everything else that distinguishes the two: the chains they run on, who can build on top of them, and what they are actually for. This comparison walks through both tokens on access, network coverage, eligibility, and composability, and stays neutral on which model is "better." They were built for different jobs.
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sofiUSD is a fully reserved, dollar-denominated stablecoin issued by SoFi Bank, N.A., a nationally chartered, FDIC-insured U.S. bank. SoFi announced it on December 18, 2025, positioning it as the first stablecoin issued by a U.S. national bank on a public, permissionless blockchain (SoFi investor relations, Dec 18 2025).
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The token uses BitGo's Stablecoin-as-a-Service platform for issuance and lifecycle management, which supplies custody and the operational infrastructure behind minting and redemption (BitGo announcement, 2025). sofiUSD launched on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token and expanded to Solana, with SoFi citing Solana's throughput and low transaction cost as the reason for the second deployment (The Block, 2026).
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On April 2, 2026, SoFi extended sofiUSD into enterprise settlement through its Big Business Banking platform, with early participants including Mastercard, Galaxy, Wintermute, Cumberland, Fireblocks, and BitGo (Crypto Times, Apr 2 2026). The defining property for this comparison is that sofiUSD is permissionless. Holding it does not require a relationship with SoFi. Any wallet on Ethereum or Solana can receive and send it like any other ERC-20 or SPL token.
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JPM Coin, ticker JPMD, is a USD deposit token from Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, the bank's blockchain payments business. JPMorgan rolled it out for institutional clients in November 2025 on Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 built within Coinbase, and described it as the first product the bank has offered on public blockchain infrastructure (J.P. Morgan newsroom, 2025).
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JPM Coin is the public-chain extension of a much older effort. Kinexys (formerly Onyx) has run blockchain deposit accounts on a private, permissioned network since 2019, and that network processes more than $5 billion in transactions on an average day and over $3 trillion cumulatively as of late 2025 (asset tokenization analysis, 2025). In January 2026 JPMorgan announced plans to take JPMD multichain, and it later began integrating the token with the Canton Network, its second public-chain extension after Base (The Block, 2026).
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The critical detail is access. JPMD is permissioned. Per JPMorgan, it is transferable only between whitelisted wallet addresses controlled by onboarded institutional clients, and it explicitly excludes retail customers (J.P. Morgan Kinexys, 2026). Living on a public chain like Base does not make it openly holdable. The smart contract enforces the whitelist on every transfer.
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This is the difference that matters most, and the one most comparisons skip past by lumping both into "bank stablecoins."
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sofiUSD is permissionless. The token contract does not gate transfers by holder identity. A developer in another country, a DeFi protocol, or an individual who has never heard of SoFi can hold and move sofiUSD the same way they hold USDC or USDT. SoFi controls minting and redemption at the edges (you go through SoFi or a partner to convert dollars to sofiUSD and back), but the token itself circulates freely once issued.
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JPM Coin is permissioned at the token level. Every wallet that can hold JPMD has been onboarded by JPMorgan and added to a whitelist, and the contract rejects transfers to addresses outside that set. The requirement to participate is, in effect, a J.P. Morgan Chase banking relationship in the United States. This keeps JPMD inside a closed circle of approved institutions, which is the point: it is built for regulated interbank and institutional settlement, not open circulation.
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A useful way to hold the distinction: sofiUSD is a bank-issued token that behaves like a public stablecoin. JPM Coin is a bank deposit token that behaves like a private settlement instrument, even when the rails underneath are public. For more on why the deposit-token-versus-stablecoin label itself is debated, see What Is a Tokenized Deposit?.
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Both tokens started on Ethereum-adjacent infrastructure, then diverged.
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sofiUSD runs on Ethereum mainnet (ERC-20) and Solana (SPL), two general-purpose public chains where the token sits alongside the broader stablecoin and DeFi ecosystem. Per the build facts as of May 2026, those are the only two chains sofiUSD is confirmed on. SoFi has signaled more networks may follow, but no additional deployments are confirmed here.
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JPM Coin launched on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2, and is being extended to the Canton Network, a chain designed for privacy-preserving institutional finance. Alongside JPMD on public chains, JPMorgan continues to operate its original private, permissioned Kinexys network for deposit accounts. So JPMorgan effectively runs a two-track topology: a private chain for the bulk of its deposit activity and selective public-chain deployments for JPMD where clients need to reach onchain counterparties.
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The chain choices reflect the access models. sofiUSD picks chains where the largest pools of open liquidity and applications already live. JPM Coin picks chains, or builds on networks, where institutional controls and privacy can be enforced at the protocol or contract layer.
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The eligibility gap is stark and worth stating plainly.
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For sofiUSD, the holder set is open. Anyone with an Ethereum or Solana wallet can receive it. Conversion to and from U.S. dollars runs through SoFi and its distribution partners, so the on-ramp and off-ramp involve a regulated entity, but possession and peer-to-peer transfer of the token do not require approval. SoFi's stated audience spans its own members, plus banks, fintechs, and enterprise platforms that want stablecoin infrastructure (Banking Dive, 2026).
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For JPM Coin, the holder set is closed. Only institutional clients onboarded to the JPM Coin platform, and their eligible clients, can hold JPMD, and the primary requirement is maintaining an account with J.P. Morgan Chase Bank in the United States. Retail users are excluded by design. This is not a temporary launch restriction. It is the intended operating model for a deposit token used in regulated institutional settlement.
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So the practical answer to "can I hold this?" is yes for sofiUSD and almost certainly no for JPM Coin unless you are an onboarded J.P. Morgan institutional client.
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Access dictates composability, and composability is where the two tokens behave most differently in practice.
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Because sofiUSD is permissionless, it is composable with the open onchain stack. A lending market, a decentralized exchange, or a payments app can integrate sofiUSD without asking SoFi for permission, the same way protocols integrate USDC. Smart contracts can custody it, pools can quote it, and other applications can compose on top of those without a gatekeeper. That openness is the upside of the public model and also the source of its risks, since the issuer cannot freeze a transfer between two arbitrary wallets the way a permissioned system can.
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JPM Coin's whitelist forecloses open composability. A public DeFi protocol cannot simply list JPMD, because any wallet the protocol does not control would be a non-whitelisted address, and the transfer would fail. JPMD's composability is intentional and bounded: it composes with applications and counterparties that JPMorgan has approved, inside controlled-access flows. The trade-off runs the other way from sofiUSD. JPMorgan keeps tight control over where the token can go, which suits regulated settlement, at the cost of the open programmability that public stablecoins offer.
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This is also where neutral payments infrastructure becomes relevant. A permissionless token like sofiUSD that lives on both Ethereum and Solana raises a real operational question: how do you move it across chains without forcing every counterparty onto the same network? Cross-chain routing infrastructure such as Eco Routes exists to abstract that, letting a payment in sofiUSD on one chain settle to a recipient on another. A permissioned token like JPMD typically handles equivalent movement inside the issuer's own controlled network instead.
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For a wider view of how both fit into the post-GENIUS-Act wave of bank tokens, see Bank-Issued Stablecoins 2026, and for the foundational hub on this category, SofiUSD Explained: How Bank-Issued Stablecoins Are Reshaping Digital Payments.
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Not exactly. Both are dollar tokens from regulated U.S. banks, but JPM Coin is described by JPMorgan as a deposit token (a tokenized claim on a bank deposit), while sofiUSD is described by SoFi as a fully reserved stablecoin. The labels carry different regulatory and risk implications, and analysts genuinely debate where some bank-issued tokens fall on that spectrum. The clearest practical difference is access: sofiUSD is permissionless and JPM Coin is permissioned.
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No. Per JPMorgan, JPMD is restricted to whitelisted institutional clients onboarded to the JPM Coin platform, and it explicitly excludes retail customers. Living on the public Base chain does not change that, because the token contract only permits transfers between approved addresses.
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No overlap as of May 2026. sofiUSD runs on Ethereum mainnet and Solana. JPM Coin runs on Base (an Ethereum Layer 2), with extension to the Canton Network, plus JPMorgan's private Kinexys network. They share the broad Ethereum ecosystem but not the same specific chains.
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It depends on the job. A permissionless token like sofiUSD reaches the open onchain economy and composes with public applications, which suits a bank that wants to be stablecoin infrastructure for fintechs and enterprises. A permissioned token like JPM Coin keeps every transfer inside an approved set, which suits regulated interbank and institutional settlement where control and compliance outweigh open reach.
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The split between sofiUSD and JPM Coin is an early signal of how bank digital dollars are dividing into two lanes. One lane is open and composable, meant to move alongside USDC and USDT across public chains. The other is closed and controlled, meant to settle value between institutions that already bank together. Most coverage treats them as variations on the same idea. They are not. The access model is the product decision.
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For anyone building payments on the open lane, the practical challenge is moving a permissionless token like sofiUSD across the chains it lives on without fragmenting liquidity or forcing counterparties onto one network. That is the problem cross-chain settlement infrastructure like Eco Routes is built to solve, by routing stablecoin payments across chains so a sender and recipient never have to share the same one.
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Methodology and sources: token facts verified May 2026 against SoFi investor relations, J.P. Morgan / Kinexys newsroom and product pages, and reporting from The Block, CoinDesk, Banking Dive, and FF News. Figures stated as of the cited dates.
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