BNY Goes Live with Tokenized Deposits; Citadel, Circle & ICE Onboard

Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) officially entered the on-chain settlement race Friday, launching a tokenized deposit service with a roster of heavy hitters including Citadel Securities, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and Circle.

The platform creates a digital representation of client deposits held at the $57.8 trillion custodian, allowing value to move 24/7 on a private permissioned ledger. Unlike stablecoins, these tokens remain within the banking perimeter, mirroring standard accounts to satisfy regulatory compliance while stripping out the latency of legacy rails.

The Institutional Receipt

BNY’s rollout is not a pilot. It is live. Early participants span the full market structure spectrum: exchanges (ICE), market makers (Citadel, DRW), and crypto natives (Anchorage Digital, Ripple Prime, Zero Hash).

Carolyn Weinberg, BNY’s Chief Product and Innovation Officer, framed the move as an infrastructure upgrade rather than a crypto pivot.

“Tokenized deposits provide us with the opportunity to extend our trusted bank deposits onto digital rails, enabling clients to operate with greater speed across collateral, margin, and payments.”

Liquidity Never Sleeps

The primary utility here is capital efficiency. In legacy finance, moving collateral over the weekend or late at night is virtually impossible, forcing firms to pre-fund accounts and trapping liquidity. BNY’s system allows these firms to settle margin calls instantly, regardless of banking hours.

This launch places BNY in direct competition with JPMorgan’s JPM Coin (now Kinexys), which has already processed hundreds of billions in transaction volume. However, BNY’s inclusion of Circle and Ripple Prime signals a broader interoperability play between TradFi liquidity and the crypto-native ecosystem.

Market reaction was muted but positive, with BNY Mellon (BK) shares trading near $121 (+1.2%), maintaining a technical uptrend as the bank modernizes its plumbing.