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A stablecoin is a token issued by an issuer against reserves it holds. Stablecoins serve two distinct roles in the Cosmos Tokenization Suite (CTS). A bank can offer selected third-party stablecoins to its clients. It can also use one as the settlement asset with a counterparty bank. Both roles are supported today. A bank issuing its own stablecoin is a different proposition, described below.

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Offering third-party stablecoins

During setup, a bank selects which assets CTS will host for it, such as USDC and EURC. That selection has two effects:
  • The bank can offer the selected assets to clients who want to hold or purchase them.
  • Clients can move the bank’s tokenized deposit onto the networks where those assets live, when the bank enables it.
The asset is issued by its own issuer. The bank hosts the asset but does not create it. CTS provides the ledger holding the client’s position, network connectors to the asset’s home network, and a custody integration that holds the keys. See Choose the assets to interoperate with for where this is decided. See Connecting Networks for the networks in scope.

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Who holds the keys

Holding a third-party stablecoin means holding a position on a network that other parties can also reach. That position requires private keys. CTS does not hold those keys. It issues signing requests to the bank’s custody provider, which applies the bank’s signing policy before acting. This ensures that signing remains subject to the bank’s chosen controls. The provider can be an established custodian such as Fireblocks or Anchorage. It can also be the bank’s own hardware security modules. See Digital Asset Custody and Key Security and Governance.

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As a settlement asset

The second role is interbank settlement. When client payments clear continuously between two banks, the accumulated obligations must settle over a rail. A stablecoin on a settlement chain is one available rail. It moves between the two banks’ custodial wallets. The counterparties agree on the settlement asset, its chain, the settlement trigger, and the wallet addresses. They do not need to agree on custodians, cores, or deployment models. See Settlement Asset Custody for 24/7 Payments for the flow. See Settlement Options for comparisons with a tokenized deposit network or a traditional rail.

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Bank-issued stablecoins

A bank-issued stablecoin creates a new liability for the bank. Issuance carries reserve management, redemption, and disclosure obligations that a hosting arrangement does not. The Fiserv AppMarket listing describes the platform as enabling financial institutions to issue, manage, and settle tokenized deposits, stablecoins, and digital assets on institution-controlled infrastructure. See Fiserv.
Issuance of a bank’s own stablecoin is not documented here. The issuance and redemption flow, reserve arrangements, and related controls still need documentation. The supported scope must be confirmed with the Cosmos Labs team at sales@cosmoslabs.io, not inferred from this page.

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Stablecoins against tokenized deposits

Stablecoins and tokenized deposits are easy to conflate, but they are not the same instrument. A tokenized deposit is a deposit on the bank’s own core, mirrored to a digital ledger. A client moving between these instruments changes what it holds a claim on. See Tokenized Deposits.

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