Did you know? The core of the global financial system—bank deposits—has just been moved on-chain.

This is not just conceptual hype; the tokenized deposit product launched by Standard Chartered Bank and Ant International has already begun operating. Real money, a real banking system, can now circulate on-chain 24/7 without interruption. What does this mean? It means that a brand new financial era is knocking at the door.

**Why is this time different?**

In recent years, the concept of RWA has gained significant attention, but to be honest, most of the on-chain assets are peripheral assets like government bonds and private equity funds. This time is different — what has been brought on chain is the most fundamental and core part of the banking system: deposits. This is the "heart" of traditional finance, not just an innovation at the fringes, but a reconstruction of the entire system.

Imagine a cross-border transfer. What is the current situation? A sum of money starts from a corporate account in Country A and has to go through layers of the SWIFT system, corresponding banks, and correspondent banks. If it's fast, it takes a few days; if slow, it takes a week. In the meantime, it gets stuck with business days and time zones—if a transfer is initiated on Friday afternoon, it won't arrive until Monday.

On-chain tokenized deposits have changed the rules of the game:

Second-level settlement, no middlemen making a profit. Operates around the clock, even during holidays. What's more intense is that the flow of funds, permissions, and payment conditions can all be automatically executed through smart contracts—saving not just time, but also a significant amount of manual operations and compliance costs.

This targets a real pain point and represents a trillion-dollar market demand.

**The real signal is here**

What is the identity of Standard Chartered Bank? It is a globally systemically important financial institution, one of the oldest vaults that carries the most weight in the international financial system. What about Ant International? A technology giant with a billion-level user base. Players of this scale are not here to test the waters; they are genuinely engaged in business.

The signal is clear: institutional-level RWA infrastructure has moved from the experimental stage of "not sure if it can be trusted" to the practical stage of "we are going to use it." It is no longer a toy for tech enthusiasts, but an infrastructure actively embraced by the financial system.

You see, when the "main artery" of bank deposits starts to go on-chain, how far can the wave of asset tokenization, credit tokenization, and derivative tokenization be? What will be the next step - atomic settlement across different currencies? Or a deep integration of DeFi and traditional finance?

These issues are no longer about "whether it will happen," but rather "when it will happen."