Fiat-on-Chain vs issuing your own stablecoin
Issuing your own stablecoin, or tokenizing your deposits
A bank can do either. One creates a second business inside the bank; the other adds a record format to the one it has.
The two paths
Indicative annual cost for a bank, USD thousands per year.
By the numbers
Instruments created
1 new0
Licenses
21
Where the deposit sits
off balance sheeton your book
Assurance cadence
monthly, third partyevery cycle, your supervisor
Side by side
Where they differ.
Each dimension scored from the institution's side: green serves it, red works against it, amber depends.
Your own stablecoin
a second business inside the bank
USD 0.6–1.5M a year, and the deposit leaves
a record format added to the one you have
USD 0.5–0.9M a year, deposit retained
Do nothing — the third option, priced
On GEL 200M of tokenizable corporate balances, a 2–3% funding-cost differential against replacing deposits that leave for a stablecoin is GEL 4–6M a year of value lost. Doing nothing is the most expensive of the three because the deposit leaves anyway.
The verdict
The cheaper option is the only one that keeps the funding.
Issuing a stablecoin costs more than tokenizing the deposit and moves the deposit off the balance sheet anyway. The deposit token costs less and keeps the funding, the customer and the supervisor you already have.
What we do not claim
- Stablecoin cost ranges are practitioner estimates from published sources (Spark, Solulab, Astraea Counsel, 2026), not quotes; our ranges are indicative and subject to the joint business case.
- A bank with a strategic reason to hold a public-chain presence may want both; the two are not exclusive.
- Reserve custody is shown on a USD 70M reserve at 0.05–0.5% a year.
Follow one dollar through both.
The interactive explainer steps through every ledger entry under each design. Two minutes, no jargon.