In June 2025, a token with a strange name was born at JP Morgan headquarters on Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York. ‘JPMD‘. When asked if it is a stablecoin, the answer is “No, it is a deposit token.” In the same month, in San Francisco, global payment dinosaur Stripe unveiled a platform called ‘Open Issuance’. It was a declaration that any company would be able to print a stablecoin under its own name. The two incidents occurred in the same week, but in opposite directions. Wall Street is trying to bring stablecoins into bank ledgers, and Silicon Valley is trying to rebuild bank ledgers themselves on stablecoins.
What started this war was Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition. In February 2025, Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure startup Bridge. Bridge was used by Space CNBC described this as “the biggest change in global money movements since credit cards.”
What Stripe buys is plumbing, not coins. A one-line API that allows businesses to receive, send, and settle dollar payments without being aware of the existence of stablecoins. This is the core of the picture that Silicon Valley paints. It charges a 1.5% commission per transaction, and even uses its own blockchain ‘Tempo’ to reduce settlement costs to the limit. Users do not need to know the coin, and companies do not need to go through a bank.
Wall Street responds with a different grammar. JPMorgan’s JPMD intentionally avoids the word ‘stablecoin’. “This is a tokenized deposit” is the official position. The differences are subtle but crucial. The collateral for stablecoins is a basket of US Treasury bonds, while the collateral for deposit tokens is bank deposits. Bank deposits are FDIC insured, and banks can use those deposits to make loans. In other words, even if it is the same ‘digital dollar’, it becomes a weapon for banks that combines financing (receipt) and payment (settlement) into one.
In December 2025, fintech bank SoFi issued SoFiUSD, a fully reserve stablecoin on a public blockchain, taking the title of “America’s first national bank-issued public stablecoin.” This is also a sign that the boundaries between banks and fintech are collapsing.
The strongest move came from Fiserv. The company, which dominates the heart of America’s financial infrastructure, announced that it would deploy its own stablecoin, FIUSD, on its network of 10,000 financial institutions, 6 million merchants, and 90 billion transactions per year. It is no coincidence that Mastercard immediately partnered with Fiserv. The strategy is to keep the consumer experience of existing card payments as is, but replace only the back-end settlement with stablecoins.
The Hidden Engine: The Interest Spread War
date: 2026-02-08 19:58:00
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