French Banking Giant BNP Paribas Joins JPMorgan’s Onyx Blockchain

JPMorgan’s blockchain started with repo markets but has begun exploring institutional access to decentralized finance markets

article-image

Source: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • JPMorgan’s permissioned blockchain Onyx tokenizes US Treasurys for fast settlement within intraday repo markets
  • BNP Paribas is the latest bank to join the network after rival Goldman Sachs began utilizing it last June

French banking giant BNP Paribas, the second-largest banking group in Europe, is now trading digital tokens on JPMorgan’s blockchain network for short-term asset loans.

JPMorgan’s blockchain system, Onyx Digital Assets, launched in December 2020 and has so far processed more than $300 billion in government bond transactions, according to a report from the Financial Times.

For now, Onyx deals specifically with the intraday repurchase (repo) market, which is valued at around $12 trillion. Banks can lend tokenized US Treasurys for a few days at a time without the assets leaving their balance sheets. This helps navigate liquidity demands imposed on institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Borrowers can then exchange the tokens for liquid cash, boosting their available collateral for use within derivatives markets. Onyx is integrated with JPMorgan’s own digital payments token, JPM Coin, which debuted around the same time as its blockchain platform.

Deals on the permissioned blockchain network are settled by automated smart contracts. Onyx’s website boasts that the service enables “near instantaneous atomic exchange of collateral for cash.” Repo transactions can be “traded, settled, and matured within a day,” and trade terms can be as little as minutes.

BNP Paribas’ head of engineering Joe Bonnaud told the Financial Times the bank’s adoption of Onyx was more than exploration of a proof of concept. The bank, which managed $612 billion in assets at the start of the year, hopes the move will help utilize blockchain as trading and operations life cycles of markets evolve. Rival bank Goldman Sachs joined Onyx last June.

Permissioned (private) blockchains such as Onyx differ greatly from Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are permissionless (public) networks. Anyone with the right equipment can join and use permissionless blockchains — either as validators or regular users — while JPMorgan alone controls who validates Onyx transactions and ultimately decides which institutions can access its network.

BNP Paribas is among a consortium of French banks experimenting with a permissioned blockchain project of the French central bank, trading debt securities as part of research on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

JPMorgan is deep in blockchain, slowly wading into crypto

JPMorgan adopting blockchain — even a watered-down version of it — might be surprising to some, considering CEO Jamie Dimon’s repeated criticisms of bitcoin over the years.

Dimon has been one of the most vocal proponents of the “blockchain, not bitcoin” mantra, which became synonymous with crypto-weary institutional players in 2018 — labeling BTC “fool’s gold” and “worthless” as recently as October.

JPMorgan developed and sold open source enterprise blockchain platform Quorum to Ethereum giant ConsenSys in August 2020 for an undisclosed amount. Quorum enables companies and other entities to deploy their own blockchain networks validated by a single entity, hosted by Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. JPMorgan joined a $65 million ConsenSys funding round one year later.

Despite Dimon’s skepticism, JPMorgan quietly began offering its richest clients access to a half-dozen crypto funds last year, including a bitcoin fund operated by New York-headquartered finance unit NYDIG, four Grayscale Investment crypto funds, and one managed by Osprey.

JPMorgan also made a “strategic investment” in the San Francisco-based blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs in February. The company helps trace illicit crypto flows to aid in regulatory matters, similarly to Chainalysis and Elliptic.

The bank even established a “lounge” (also named Onyx) in the blockchain-powered metaverse app Decentraland in the same month, the first major institution to do so.

As for what’s next, head of Onyx Digital Assets Tyrone Lobban told reporters JPMorgan was exploring institutional access to decentralized finance markets via Onyx, although details were not forthcoming.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates (5).png

Research

Outside of stablecoins, the value of tokenized assets sits below $20B, dominated by the following asset classes: private credit, US Treasuries, commodities, institutional alternative funds, stocks, non-US government debt, and corporate bonds. In the coming months, we see the greatest opportunities in the tokenization of illiquid markets, particularly private equity. However, the successful integration of offchain assets into blockchain ecosystems relies heavily on clear and consistent regulatory frameworks, with purpose-built infrastructure to support it.

article-image

The MicroStrategy founder understood digital scarcity long before Bitcoin, and it’s a story of bubbles, brokers and a “monster bull run.”

article-image

DAS panelists shared strong venture capital takeaways, from how big a raise should be to the role VCs play in the industry

article-image

Titan Exchange CEO Chris Chung says Titan bests Solana’s incumbent DEX aggregator Jupiter on price 80% of the time

article-image

The SEC’s newest statement on PoW mining adds further clarity, though a commissioner points out its limits

article-image

Markets react to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments at yesterday’s FOMC meeting

article-image

At DAS, the US president noted he’s called upon Congress to enact “simple, common-sense rules” for stablecoins and market structure