How Wall Street Is Using Ethereum as Financial Infrastructure

Stablecoins and tokenization as the entry point

Wall Street‘s adoption of Ethereum’s infrastructure is also visible in the rapid growth of “tokenized dollars.” Following the passage of the GENIUS Act in July 2025, a landmark piece of US legislation that established a clear framework for stablecoins, the total market capitalization of these assets climbed to $300 billion. For banks, stablecoins on Ethereum represent digital versions of the US dollar that can move around the clock, avoiding the settlement risk associated with traditional banking hours and weekend closures.

Traditional payment giants such as Visa and Mastercard have integrated stablecoin settlement APIs to support global payments on the network. These firms are not interacting with the speculative side of crypto. Instead, they are using Ethereum-based stablecoins to settle transactions between merchants and banks in near real time.

As banks adapt to client demand for faster cross-border transfers, the Ethereum network provides the secure infrastructure needed to move these regulated digital dollars.

Tokenized funds and real-world assets

The evolution of Ethereum has moved beyond payments into the tokenization of more complex investment vehicles. In December 2025, JPMorgan made headlines by launching its first money market fund on the public Ethereum blockchain. Trading under the ticker MONY, the fund allows qualified investors to access yields from traditional US Treasury securities, using Ethereum as the distribution layer.

By placing a fund like MONY on the Ethereum blockchain, JPMorgan enabled peer-to-peer transferability and daily dividend reinvestment that were previously difficult to achieve. Investors can subscribe or redeem using cash or stablecoins through institutional platforms. In this structure, Ethereum is not the investment itself. It functions as the digital wrapper that increases liquidity and operational efficiency.

This development marks a turning point in which Ethereums smart contracts handle much of the operational burden of fund administration, significantly reducing overhead costs. By automating yield distribution through code, Ethereum allows these funds to operate with a level of precision and transparency that legacy databases cannot easily replicate.

The strategic silence: Why Wall Street is not naming Ethereum

If you examine the marketing materials of top-tier banks, you will see terms such as “onchain liquidity,” “distributed ledgers” or “programmable payments,” yet the underlying technology is almost always Ethereum. This “invisible” adoption helps explain why Ethereum is frequently chosen by Wall Street institutions.

A key technical driver is the network effect. Much like the internet relies on standardized protocols, the financial system is converging around Ethereums programming standards. By late 2025, multiple reports suggested that tokenized dollars on the network were quietly reshaping how money moves between major clearinghouses.

As more assets such as treasuries, bonds and real estate are tokenized on Ethereum, the network‘s utility becomes increasingly evident in institutional use cases. Since its launch in 2024, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund has become the worlds largest tokenized money market fund, deploying more than $1 billion directly on the Ethereum blockchain to enable near real-time dividend distribution.

Similarly, in late 2025, JPMorgan rebranded its blockchain division as Kinexys, facilitating more than $2 billion in average daily transaction volume through Ethereum-compatible rails.

By relying on Ethereums “credible neutrality,” these firms avoid the constraints of proprietary private blockchains that lack global interoperability. Instead, they treat Ethereum as a neutral and largely invisible settlement layer. As a result, the network has begun to function as a standardized operating system for global capital, regardless of whether the brand is explicitly acknowledged in boardrooms.