The first four parts built the working definition, the mechanics, the legal-control overlay, and the editorial framing. This part lists four production cases that, between them, cover most of the structural variety. They are deliberately picked so each maps to a distinct legal and operational shape: a tokenized fund, a tokenized deposit, a regulator-coordinated multi-asset platform, and a non-USD stablecoin. Subsequent chapters return to each of them as worked examples.
Where it appears in production
BUIDL. A tokenized US Treasury and cash money-market fund (MMF) issued by a major asset manager, with units represented on public Ethereum and on permissioned variants (BUIDL on Securitize). The fund itself is structured under standard US fund law as a section 3(c)(7) private fund, the token is the share representation, and the transfer agent operates the smart-contract-based register. Notable as the first widely-distributed institutional tokenized fund product, useful primarily as a benchmark for how a large traditional issuer chooses to map an existing fund structure onto a chain. BUIDL has become a reference instrument for on-chain cash collateral among institutional counterparties despite being structurally a fund interest, not a stablecoin.
Kinexys Digital Payments. JPMorgan's tokenized deposit and payment infrastructure, renamed from Onyx in 2024 (Kinexys overview). Operates on a permissioned chain, supports intraday and cross-border movements between participating institutions, and treats the tokens as representations of deposit liabilities on the bank's own balance sheet rather than as a separate stablecoin. A useful example of the tokenized-deposit model and of why a bank would build its own ledger rather than rely on someone else's. The Partior consortium between DBS, JPMorgan, and Standard Chartered runs in the same lineage for cross-bank tokenized deposit settlement, and is treated separately in Tokenised deposits.
Project Ensemble. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA)-led wholesale CBDC and tokenisation sandbox, working through tokenized deposits, tokenized assets, and a wholesale CBDC for interbank settlement (HKMA Ensemble). Useful as an example of a regulator-led architecture where the central bank operates the settlement layer and commercial banks operate the asset and deposit layers above it. Demonstrates the "tiered ledger" model that several Asia-Pacific (APAC) jurisdictions are converging on. Phase 2 added cross-border use cases linking the Ensemble sandbox to the bilateral HKMA-MAS work.
JPYC. A Japanese yen (JPY)-denominated stablecoin operating under Japan's funds-transfer service regime, used in retail and corporate payment contexts in Japan (JPYC launch). The Financial Services Agency (FSA) registered JPYC as a fund-transfer service provider (FTSP) on 18 August 2025, and JPYC launched the first FSA-approved yen stablecoin on 27 October 2025, backed 1:1 by cash deposits and Japanese government bonds. Useful as an Asia-domiciled example outside the dollar stack, and as an illustration of how a stablecoin issued under a non-EMI, non-MiCA framework still ends up addressing the same questions of reserve composition, redemption rights, and operator licensing.
These four cover most of the structural variety: a tokenized fund (BUIDL), a tokenized deposit (Kinexys), a regulator-coordinated multi-asset platform (Ensemble), and a non-USD stablecoin (JPYC). Each gets revisited later with the relevant operational and regulatory granularity.
What to read next
Chapter II, Stablecoin types, takes the deposit-versus-stablecoin distinction introduced here and works through the full taxonomy: e-money tokens, asset-referenced tokens, payment tokens, tokenized deposits, and the bank-issued stablecoin variants that sit somewhere between the categories. It is the natural follow-on if the JPYC and Kinexys examples surfaced questions about how the regulator boundary actually works.
Chapter V, Permissioned blockchains, picks up the operator-licence question raised in Parts 2 and 3 and explains why the institutional stack runs almost entirely on permissioned or hybrid ledgers, what the major platforms are (Canton, Fabric, Corda, the Quorum lineage), and how the choice of ledger interacts with the choice of legal jurisdiction. Read it before any deeper chapter on settlement architecture.
Chapter IV picks up settlement finality, which Part 3 introduced but did not exhaust. Chapter VI returns to atomic delivery-versus-payment, which Part 4 flagged as narrower than it sounds. Chapter VII goes deep on tokenized deposits as a category, with the Kinexys, Partior, and Ensemble worked examples. The cluster builds out from this chapter; pick the next door based on which of the four production cases above raised a question that needs answering first.