Coinatory Publisher
State Street, a leading global custodian and one of the world’s largest asset managers, has become the inaugural third-party custodian on JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform, a blockchain-based infrastructure for trading tokenized debt securities.
In a move that underscores growing institutional confidence in digital asset markets, State Street will now offer custody services for blockchain-native debt instruments, extending its traditional financial services capabilities to encompass tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
The development marks a significant milestone in the evolution of institutional finance, as JPMorgan expands the scope of Kinexys—its rebranded tokenization platform formerly known as Onyx—launched in 2020. The platform enables the issuance, trading, and settlement of tokenized government and corporate bonds on permissioned blockchains.
In the platform’s inaugural transaction, State Street purchased $100 million in tokenized commercial paper from Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), one of Southeast Asia’s oldest financial institutions. This landmark deal demonstrates the growing appetite among major asset managers to incorporate blockchain infrastructure into their portfolios.
Founded in 1792, State Street currently oversees more than $49 trillion in assets under custody and an additional $5.1 trillion in assets under management, placing it alongside BlackRock and Vanguard as one of the “Big Three” asset management firms. Its expansion into blockchain-based custody reflects a broader trend among financial incumbents exploring tokenized instruments to streamline settlement and improve asset efficiency.
JPMorgan’s continued push into tokenized RWAs is reflective of the sector’s explosive growth, with the market surging over 65% in 2025 to reach a capitalization of $26.4 billion—excluding stablecoins—according to RWA.xyz.
Complementing this momentum, Kinexys entered a strategic partnership with Chainlink in May to develop payment infrastructure supporting institutional settlement of tokenized assets. In June, Chainlink, Kinexys, and Ondo Finance successfully executed a cross-chain transfer of Ondo’s OUSG tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, bridging the asset between a layer-1 testnet and Kinexys’s permissioned chain.
Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov emphasized that high-quality, on-chain assets are critical to enhancing capital velocity and unlocking the next phase of digital asset adoption. “We need more high-quality assets onchain, but we also need more frictionless payments that existing institutions can use easily,” he said.
As State Street integrates custody of tokenized assets and JPMorgan accelerates the infrastructure around RWAs, the foundation for mainstream adoption of blockchain-based financial instruments continues to solidify, setting the stage for broader institutional participation in the digital economy.
