Goldman Sachs, MUFG and 21 banks launch US dollar stablecoin project, Ripple veteran cites déjà vu

TradFi’s approach: control and isolation

Yoshikawa’s eight years at Ripple, where she helped shape the company’s institutional growth in Asia, inform her remarks. She highlighted a common pattern in traditional finance: after years of evaluating external blockchain solutions, leading banks ultimately prefer to create their own closed frameworks. By doing so, they maintain control over liquidity, compliance, and transaction fees, rather than integrating with established platforms such as the XRP Ledger from Ripple.

Yoshikawa emphasized that the largest banks repeatedly move toward systems they can fully oversee, rather than adopting open networks, reflecting consistent strategic priorities across the industry.

Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, is collaborating with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Japan’s leading bank by assets, to spearhead this stablecoin initiative. The project is characteristic of a shift where top banks avoid third-party blockchain integration and build bespoke solutions for institutional needs.

Mini dictionary: MUFG Bank, or Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, is the largest banking institution in Japan and a major global financial services provider.

Japan’s dual-track stablecoin development

The news coincides with developments in Japan, where MUFG Bank is active in another ambitious digital asset project. By March 2027, MUFG, along with fellow megabanks SMBC and Mizuho, plans to launch interbank settlements using a yen-based stablecoin. This product, built on the Progmat platform originally developed within MUFG, could potentially enable controlled blockchain-based yen-to-dollar conversions for cross-border transactions.

As the only Asian participant in the U.S. dollar stablecoin initiative, MUFG’s involvement in both projects places it at the intersection of global and domestic stablecoin innovation.

Mini dictionary: Progmat is a blockchain-based platform established by MUFG to support digital assets and programmable money, helping banks issue and manage stablecoins in Japan.

Stablecoin competition and market segmentation

The bank consortium aims to serve internal settlements among member banks and large corporate clients, offering direct interbank payments and coordinated audits. However, this focus overlaps with use cases already targeted by established, regulated crypto-native stablecoins such as RLUSD from Ripple and USDC.

By September 2026, RLUSD’s market capitalization rose above $2 billion, with over $1 billion of the asset issued on the XRP Ledger. In June, Japanese financial authorities officially approved RLUSD trading on the SBI VC Trade exchange.

The overlap in objectives could drive market segmentation. Banking tokens concentrate on closed-loop, highly auditable transactions between consortium members, while regulated open-market stablecoins like RLUSD and USDC remain active in fintech, retail, and decentralized finance sectors, where fast and flexible implementation is important.

Yoshikawa noted that alliances with as many as 21 major participants often struggle to achieve timely consensus and effective governance, giving independent stablecoins a practical time advantage as the banking network works to finalize its rules for a 2027 launch.