What a tokenized deposit is and how Credora rated JPMD

JPMD carries an indicative A+ rating from Credora, corresponding to a Probability of Default (PD) of 0.088% annually. JPMD is J.P. Morgan’s tokenized deposit, issued through its Kinexys platform, and its Ethereum contract went live on 19 October 2026 (Decrypt). It is the first tokenized deposit Credora has rated.

What a tokenized deposit is

A tokenized deposit is a commercial bank deposit represented on a blockchain. Each JPMD token mirrors a US dollar credited to the holder’s Blockchain Deposit Account at JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Tokens are minted when the deposit is credited and burned on redemption, and the bank’s deposit ledger remains the record of what it owes. The contract caps supply at $10 million on Ethereum and $5 million on Base until J.P. Morgan raises the limit.

Tokenized deposit vs stablecoin vs tokenized fund

The difference sits in what backs the claim. A stablecoin or a tokenized Treasury fund holds a separate reserve, usually Treasury bills and cash at a custodian, and the holder’s recovery depends on that pool. A tokenized deposit has no separate pool. The holder is a creditor of the bank, and the reserve is the bank’s whole asset side. The BIS gives tokenized deposits a central role in the tokenised unified ledger proposed in its 2025 Annual Economic Report.

For a credit analyst, that moves the question from reserve composition to bank credit. At 30 September 2026 the JPMorgan Chase group held $5.09 trillion of assets against $2.78 trillion of deposits: 31% in loans, 21% in the trading book, 16% in Treasuries and agency bonds, 16% in collateralised short-term lending and 6% in cash. Under U.S. depositor preference, deposits rank ahead of the bank’s other general creditors, and $599 billion of equity and long-term debt absorbs losses before a depositor loses a dollar. These are consolidated group figures; the bank is the large majority of the group.

How Credora rates a tokenized deposit

The anchor

Credora anchors a tokenized deposit on the issuing bank, which here is both obligor and custodian. The asset side is priced by what the bank holds. Assets other than loans (69.39% of the balance sheet) are priced at Credora’s cash rate of 0.010%; the loan book (30.61%) is priced at 0.025% to reflect credit risk. That gives an asset PD of 0.015%. The custodian term, at Credora’s rate for the strongest custodian banks, is 0.007%. Combined without double counting, and multiplied by 1.05 for Kinexys as a Tier 1 infrastructure dependency, the anchor PD is 0.023%, A+.

The modifiers

Ten modifiers apply to the asset. Five carry a charge, totalling −2.200 notches:

Modifier	Notches	Reason
Smart contract risk	−0.70	No published audit; the Ethereum contract is days old
Fund transparency	−0.50	Nothing reconciles tokens issued to deposits held
Operational security	−0.50	How the token’s keys are held is undisclosed
AUM	−0.25	$1.0 million outstanding on Base, none on Ethereum
Concentration	−0.25	Two addresses hold all supply on Base

The other five modifiers are neutral. Inputs that could not be confirmed from public sources are graded at their worst reasonable reading. Together the charges move the PD from 0.023% to 0.088%, still inside the A+ band of 0% to 0.1%.

Where JPMD sits among tokenized dollars

Among nine rated tokenized dollars and Treasury funds, JPMD ranks seventh:

Asset	PD	Rating
WTGXX	0.039%	A+
BUIDL	0.041%	A+
USDC	0.043%	A+
JLTXX	0.051%	A+
STAC	0.067%	A+
VBILL	0.077%	A+
JPMD	0.088%	A+
MONY	0.134%	A
USYC	0.240%	A

The bank anchor alone, at 0.023%, would place JPMD ahead of every asset on the list. The gap comes from the token layer.

What would move the JPMD rating

The rating sits 0.012 percentage points inside the A+ ceiling, so a few inputs decide the grade.

Disclosure would strengthen it. Published smart contract audits would move the PD to 0.069%. An attested reconciliation of tokens to deposits would move it to 0.065%. Disclosed key custody would move it to 0.065% under multi-party computation or 0.076% under hardware security modules. With audits, reconciliation and key custody all resolved, the PD would be 0.035%, below every peer in the table.

In the other direction, any one of these assumptions would tip it to A: pricing the loan book at 0.050% (0.119%), reading the bank’s reporting as quarterly rather than continuous (0.120%), or charging the one-dollar track record at the fund floor (0.103%).

Upgrade authority sits outside the score for now. One key can replace the token’s logic without delay, and the key that issues tokens can also raise the supply limit. Credora does not yet price this for tokenized assets. Adoption will move the score too, since the size and concentration charges reflect a token on its first day.

Peer ratings are on the Credora app; published assessments are on the reports page.

Key takeaway

A tokenized deposit carries the credit of the bank that issues it, and for JPMD that credit sets an anchor PD of 0.023%. The rest of the 0.088% comes from the token: missing disclosures and the size of a day-one supply. A holder cannot change the bank’s credit, but the token-level inputs can change with disclosure and adoption, which is why JPMD’s indicative A+ is a starting point with limited headroom.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a tokenized deposit and a stablecoin?

A stablecoin is backed by a separate reserve, usually Treasury bills and cash held at a custodian. A tokenized deposit is a claim on the issuing bank itself, so the holder is a depositor and the backing is the bank’s whole balance sheet. Under U.S. depositor preference, that claim ranks ahead of the bank’s other general creditors.

What does Credora’s A+ rating on JPMD measure?

It is an indicative rating, scored from public sources without the issuer’s participation, expressing a one-year Probability of Default (PD) of 0.088%. The PD is a calibrated ordinal risk score informed by probability theory, not a literal probability estimate.

What could change JPMD’s Credora rating?

Published smart contract audits, a reconciliation of tokens to deposits and disclosed key custody would each lower the PD. More conservative pricing of the bank’s loan book, or reading its reporting as quarterly, would each move JPMD to A.