Why is the cash leg harder than the asset leg?

The asset leg is a technical problem. The cash leg requires legal continuity as a bank deposit or central bank money, which means it must inherit deposit insurance and integration with real-time gross settlement systems.

What makes tokenized bank deposits different from stablecoins?

Tokenized deposits carry legal status as bank deposits and inherit deposit insurance. Stablecoins rely on issuer reputation. The BIS distinguishes them on singleness, elasticity, and integrity.

What does the cash leg look like in real transactions?

In JPMorgan Kinexys settling Ondo tokenized Treasuries, the cash leg was a tokenized commercial bank deposit. Across the industry, the cash leg is either tokenized bank deposits or stablecoins, but not yet on-chain central bank money at scale.

Resources / Blog

The Cash Leg Problem: Why the Asset Side of Tokenization Is the Easy Part

The bottleneck in tokenized finance isn't issuing the asset. It's settling the trade with money that behaves like money on-chain.

Infrastructure25 April 2026Matias Hagen — Co-Founder, FractiFi

Tokenizing a bond is straightforward. Settling it with money that actually behaves like money on-chain is not. The asset leg of tokenization has been solved in pilot after pilot. The cash leg still routes through the same real-time gross settlement systems built for a pre-tokenized world, and that gap is where the current wave of real-world asset projects breaks down.