JP Morgan Files Trademark for JPMD: Is It a Stablecoin?

JPMorgan Chase has filed for a Web3 offering called JPMD with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, stoking speculation the U.S. investment bank is planning to launch a stablecoin. 

The trademark application, filed on June 15, describes a project that entails “trading, exchange, transfer and payment services for digital assets” issued on blockchains. The U.S. PTO has accepted—but not yet approved—the proposal. 

The filing neither uses the word stablecoin, nor describes plans to issue a digital asset pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar or another fiat currency—a key characteristic of stablecoins.

However, some crypto industry experts have noted the proposal’s focus on cryptocurrency-related services, from reconciling and clearing financial transactions to digital currency transmission, as indicators that JPMD could be a stablecoin. 

“It[‘]s not like wall street is buying all the coins but they’re definitely wanting to adopt the tech (occasionally through gritted teeth),” a self-identified Aptos Labs employee by the username zacharyr0th said Monday in an X post.

The letter “D” in the initialism JPMD seems to stand for “dollar,” as in J.P. Morgan Dollar. That would align the name of J.P. Morgan’s potential stablecoin with those of more popular tokens such as Circle’s U.S. Dollar Coin. 

JP Morgan did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment. 

The filing comes as U.S. lawmakers make headway on enshrining regulatory guardrails for stablecoins into law through the Genius Act. The bill, which is expected to pass this summer, would likely increase banks and other financial institutions’ usage of stablecoins in the U.S., leading to a stablecoin market boom. 

Ahead of the Genius Act’s passing, several crypto and non-crypto companies are making forays into stablecoins in a bid to capitalize on the looser restrictions for digital assets. 

Crypto custody firm BitGo announced last fall the debut of its stablecoin USDS, while the Trump family-backed World Liberty project said in March it would debut USD1, a dollar-pegged token backed by U.S. Treasuries, dollars, and cash equivalents.

JP Morgan’s potential stablecoin plans also come as the financial institution continues experimenting with digital assets and the blockchain technology that undergird them. 

The bank introduced its blockchain unit, Onyx, in 2020, making it one of the earliest experimenters with distributed-ledger technology among large financial institutions in the U.S. Renamed Kinexys last year, the blockchain system has reportedly processed more than $2 billion in daily transaction volumes since its inception, according to the project’s website.  

Edited by James Rubin