Banks moved dollars from Singapore to New York on a Saturday, over a blockchain
@sytaylor just published the clearest breakdown of what banks are building to answer stablecoins, and it is worth your time đ
- On September 5 Citi and DBS sent dollars from Singapore to New York in minutes, using tokenized deposits on Swift's new ledger. Still a pilot
- They are not upgrading the core. One chief architect described 60+ markets, a separate mainframe in each, the code's authors long retired, and no full map of what depends on what
- So they route around it. A tokenized deposit is a bank balance represented on a blockchain, still a claim on the bank, with a second way to move
- Nothing actually travels. Bank A signs an IOU to Bank B on a shared ledger, Bank B credits the supplier on Saturday, and the two banks net out what they owe each other on Monday
- The ledger is shared because no bank wants to trust another bank's database. Keeping parties that do not trust each other in sync is the one thing blockchains are good at
- Citi's Services made $21.3B in 2025, JPMorgan's Payments $19.3B. That is the revenue all of this is defending
Bullish?