Programmable money in practice

Written by Markus Bergvinson, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance

The tokenised money landscape

A decade after the first stablecoin launched as a niche instrument for crypto trading, tokenised money has become a central question for institutional finance, central banks and regulators worldwide. The market spans four instrument categories at different stages of maturity: CBDCs, largely confined to jurisdictional pilots; tokenised deposits, with Kinexys by JP Morgan as a leading example of live institutional deployment; fiat-pegged stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC, dominant by transaction volume; and tokenised money market funds, emerging as the yield-bearing option for institutional cash holdings. The regulatory response is accelerating but uneven. Around 70% of jurisdictions are developing or have introduced stablecoin rules, yet frameworks remain inconsistent and meaningful cross-border supervisory cooperation is largely absent. That gap is what this study sets out to map.

Research approach and methodology
The findings draw on 21 semi-structured inte…