Bank Coins Compared: Canton, Hedera, XDC and Stellar Explained

Canton, Hedera, XDC and Stellar are often grouped together as coins “built for banks,” but they work in very different ways. A Bullrunners video compares them on three points: who can see the ledger, who runs the network, and who can freeze or claw back tokens. The result is four different meanings of the word “institutional.”

This matters if you hold any of these coins or follow partnership headlines. The DTCC settles nearly all US stock and bond trades, the video says. During 2026 the DTCC put real securities on Canton, and it also announced plans with Stellar. That is one company backing two very different designs. Knowing which design a coin uses tells you more than the name of the bank in the headline.

Why do banks want blockchain at all?

Banks want faster settlement and fewer copies of the same records. In the traditional system, moving a share or bond from one owner to another can take a day or more. Middlemen check and reconcile records along the way. A shared digital ledger promises settlement around the clock with less reconciliation.

The obstacle is visibility. On a normal public blockchain, anyone can see every transaction. That builds trust, but as the video puts it, no bank wants competitors watching its trades and client positions in real time. Each of the four networks handles this problem differently.

How does Canton keep bank trades private?

On Canton, each trade is visible only to the parties involved, while the network as a whole keeps everyone’s records in step. Canton was built by a company called Digital Asset. It was announced in May 2023 with a group of banks and market firms, including Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas.

The video compares Canton to a shared office building. Everyone uses the same lifts and security desk, but each company’s rooms are locked. Each institution can run its own part of the network. A shared layer, run by large operators called super validators, makes sure the separate parts agree. Canton is often described as a “network of networks.”

Digital Asset co-founder Yuval Rooz separates privacy from anonymity. He defines privacy as sharing information on a need-to-know basis. He compares it to a contract’s confidentiality clause, which still allows disclosure to lawyers, accountants, or a court or regulator under subpoena. He says privacy, not anonymity, is what buy-side firms need before they manage their portfolios on Canton.

The DTCC’s work with Canton has moved in steps:

1. In December 2025, the DTCC picked Canton to put US Treasury securities held at its depository on chain.
2. According to Canton’s own account in August 2026, the DTCC began processing production trades on the network on July 15. Those trades used tokenized Treasury and equity securities.
3. In March 2026, Visa was selected as a Canton super validator. It is the first payments company in that role.

The video said the service was due to open to the wider market in October. The DTCC has since published launch details for its tokenization service. Roughly $30 trillion of assets held at the DTCC’s depository will be eligible. At first the service will support 25 securities across US equities, exchange-traded funds and Treasuries. Each token is backed 1:1 by an asset the depository already holds. The service will initially run on two closed platforms, Canton and Besu, so it is not a Canton-only service.

Canton has its own token, Canton Coin. According to the video, fees are set in dollars, paid in Canton Coin and then burned. Operators and app builders are rewarded with newly created coins. For more on the token side, see Bullrunners’ piece on what LSEG, DTCC and Visa mean for Canton’s coin.

Some critics doubt Canton is a blockchain at all. On the podcast The Chopping Block, voices asked whether it is closer to a shared bank database with crypto branding, because the main operators are approved and much of the activity is hidden. Canton’s backers reply that regulated money, permissioning and privacy are features, not bugs.

Who controls Hedera?

Hedera is controlled by a governing council of large organizations, even though anyone can use and view the network. The council allows up to 39 members, each serving a limited term. Members have included Google, IBM, Deutsche Telekom and, from February 2026, FedEx.

Hedera is not a blockchain in the usual sense. It uses a system called hashgraph. Computers constantly share what they have heard with each other, like gossip spreading around a room, until they agree on the order of events.

In September 2024, Hedera contributed the code that runs its network to the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as an open source project called Hiero. The video notes that critics still point out that the right to run the main machines is limited to council members.

The video also shows a 2021 interview in which co-founder Leemon Baird was asked whether corporate control makes Hedera too centralized. He said he does not trust any single party. Control, in his view, should be spread across known organizations in different countries that care about their reputation and are hard to bribe. He argues that the people governing a network should be transparent, not anonymous, and says Hedera publishes the minutes of its council meetings. The video notes this is the opposite of the cypherpunk view, where nobody should need to know who runs the machines. Both camps call their approach decentralized.

How is XDC different?

XDC calls itself a “public permissioned” network: public to use, permissioned to run. XDC was built by a company called XinFin. Its main validators, called masternodes, must stake XDC and pass identity checks known as KYC (know your customer). According to XDC’s own site, cited in the video, the network runs with 108 core validators.

XDC is pitched at trade finance, the paperwork-heavy world of invoices and letters of credit. A letter of credit is a bank’s promise to pay a seller once goods ship and the documents check out. Under XinFin’s hybrid model, sensitive documents stay in private systems. A digital fingerprint of each key document is recorded on the public chain. In theory, this makes it harder to finance the same shipment twice, one of trade finance’s oldest frauds.

The video shows a February 2026 interview, which it attributes to Bloomberg, with co-founder Atul Khekade. In it, Khekade agreed that mortgages, car payments and paychecks could run through blockchain networks within five years. The video calls that a forecast, not a certainty. Known, checked operators reassure compliance teams but worry crypto purists, the video says. They also mean a regulator would know exactly whom to call.

Why does Stellar’s clawback matter?

Stellar’s clawback matters because it gives token issuers a built-in way to reverse ownership on an otherwise open network. The video calls Stellar the most open of the four. It says Stellar was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim, and anyone can run a validator. Each validator chooses which others it trusts, and agreement spreads through those overlapping circles of trust.

In May 2026, Stellar and the DTCC announced plans to let assets held at the DTCC’s depository be tokenized on Stellar. The launch is expected in the first half of 2027. A podcast host suggested the DTCC’s setup would have to be permissioned. Stellar Development Foundation chief executive Denelle Dixon disagreed. She said compliance tools such as KYC controls and clawback are built into Stellar’s base layer.

Clawback means an issuer can pull tokens back, for example after a court order or a theft. The video says regulators expect regulated funds to be able to correct ownership records. Institutions like the option. Purists dislike it.

Stellar has hosted institutional money before. According to the video, MoneyGram announced a partnership in October 2021 to use Stellar and the USDC stablecoin. In the same year, Franklin Templeton began running a US-registered money market fund whose shares are represented by a token called Benji. Dixon said Franklin Templeton initially ran the blockchain record alongside its traditional system as “training wheels.”

The four networks side by side

Network	Who can see transactions	Who runs it	Notable controls
Canton	Only the parties to each trade	Institutions plus approved super validators	Privacy by design
Hedera	Public	Governing council of up to 39 organizations	Known, named governors
XDC	Public chain, private documents	Masternodes with stake and KYC	Identity-checked operators
Stellar	Public	Anyone can run a validator	Issuer clawback and KYC tools

Rooz makes a wider point in the video: even on the most open blockchains, many stablecoins can already be frozen or burned by their issuers. Bullrunners has explained how this works for Ripple’s stablecoin in RLUSD freeze and clawback settings. The video’s conclusion is that the real question is not whether a network is open or closed. It is who holds which switches, and whether holders know about them.

A three-question test for bank partnership headlines

The video offers a simple framework for the next “bank uses coin” headline. Instead of asking whether it is bullish, ask where the network sits on the map:

1. Visibility. Can everyone see the ledger, as on Stellar or Hedera, or only the parties to each trade, as on Canton?
2. Control. Can anyone run the network, or is it a council or identity-checked operators? This tells you who could change the rules, and whom a government would lean on.
3. Demand. A bank can use a network’s technology without buying much of its token. Read what is actually being used before assuming anyone needs the coin.

Then add one more check: is it a pilot, a plan or something live? The video warns that these words are often blurred in crypto coverage. It adds that many bank deals pay fees that are tiny compared with the value moving through them.

What to watch next

The DTCC describes its approach as multi-chain rather than a bet on one network. So the useful updates are concrete ones. One is how the DTCC’s tokenization service grows beyond its first 25 securities on Canton and Besu. Another is whether the Stellar plan launches as expected in the first half of 2027. A third is whether any of these deals creates measurable demand for the tokens themselves. Bullrunners’ guide to whether bank money ever reaches the token offers a way to judge that.