In brief
JP Morgan executive Emma Lovett warns the stablecoin market may be “overcrowding” with too much fragmentation.
Meanwhile, the bank recently filed a trademark for its own JPMD—which onlookers think could be a sign of it launching its own digital currency.
Major U.S. banks including JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo are reportedly exploring stablecoin partnerships, but plans depend on pending regulatory legislation.
An exec from Wall Street giant JP Morgan said at Tuesday’s DigiAssets 2025 conference that she’s wary of having to navigate an “overcrowded” stablecoin market. But she said that less than 48 hours after the bank registered a trademark for JPMD, which it said it intends to use for payments and “virtual currency, digital currency.”
“I just think we, as an industry, we all sort of just need to take a little bit of a step back and think about whether we will end up overcrowding the market, or whether there will be more fragmentation” because firms all opt to use their own, said Emma Lovett, an executive director at JPMorgan Chase, speaking at the London conference.
Lovett heads up the firm’s markets distributed ledger technology and credit efforts.
“We all know that we’re the middle of this big, stablecoin hype,” she added. “But I think, two or three years from now, it’ll be interesting to see how the market evolves in terms of who has issued their own stablecoins and who is using what.”
Much of that hype has been driven by progress on the GENIUS Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins and digital assets. It’s also been spurred along by the “moon landing moment” IPO of USDC issuer Circle—which is pointedly not a traditional Wall Street institution, but accounts for $61.5 billion worth of the $261 billion total stablecoin market cap, according to CoinGecko data.
JPM going solo?
Last month, JPM was one of the banks linked to reported to be teaming up with several institutions—including Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—that were exploring a partnership to co-launch a stablecoin, unnamed sources told The Wall Street Journal.
But the sources added that those plans would all hinge on the fate of pending stablecoin legislation. Those banks might soon get a clear signal on the fate of their stablecoin plans.
The GENIUS Act is scheduled for a vote later this afternoon. So far, Bo Hines, executive director of President Donald Trump’s Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, seems optimistic that the Senate will give the bill the green light.
“Excited to see the GENIUS Act pass today,” he wrote on X, adding that it will help “establish U.S. dominance in digital asset innovation” and “protect the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.”
He’s not alone in thinking the U.S. has carved out an edge for itself because of its regulatory embrace of crypto. At the same London conference, an exec from asset manager Franklin Templeton said the European Union risks becoming a “flyover zone” as the U.S. and Asia make strides towards embracing digital assets.
Additional reporting by Stephen Graves
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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