GYEN Stablecoin 2026: Wind-Down, Redemption Deadline and What It Means for Holders

Last Updated: October 28, 2026

Quick Answer: GYEN is a Japanese yen stablecoin issued by GMO-Z.com Trust Company (GMO Trust), a New York trust company owned by Japan’s GMO Internet Group, and it is being wound down. GMO Trust stopped minting GYEN on May 15, 2026, and holders can redeem it at 1 GYEN = 1 yen until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on November 11, 2026; tokens still held on supported blockchains after that are subject to a mandatory redemption paid in USDC, with conditions set out by the issuer. GYEN’s dollar value simply tracks the yen: at the Bank of Japan’s October 28 rate of about 157.8 yen per dollar, one GYEN at par is worth about $0.0063, so there is no meaningful long-term “price prediction” for it.

GYEN launched in 2021, backed one to one by yen held in US bank accounts and supervised by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). Its market price has often strayed from that peg, and trading is now extremely thin.

Key Takeaways

• GYEN is being wound down: GMO Trust began a voluntary dissolution under New York Banking Law, removed minting on May 15, 2026, and set a 180-day redemption window that closes on November 11, 2026
• Redemption at par runs until the deadline: direct redemptions pay 1 yen per GYEN with no fee (minimum 100 GYEN); eligible tokens left on supported chains afterwards are redeemed in USDC, with the exchange rate set on November 12
• Reserves covered the tokens: 969.5 million GYEN outstanding on August 31, 2026 against about ¥978.3 million in yen reserves
• The peg has been weak in the market: only about 13% of CoinMarketCap daily closes from January 1 to May 14, 2026 were within 5% of 1 yen, and closes ranged from ¥0.36 (June 28) to ¥1.35 (September 28)
• Trading is minimal: Coinbase ended GYEN transfers on October 26 and is converting balances into USDC, and CoinGecko lists only three small decentralized markets

GYEN Key Data (October 2026)

Sources: CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, GMO Trust attestations and the Bank of Japan. CoinGecko lists an all-time high of $0.0608. CoinMarketCap’s supply is about 2.2 times the August attestation figure, so its market cap is roughly double CoinGecko’s.

What Is GYEN?

GYEN is a fiat-backed stablecoin designed to hold a value of one Japanese yen. Each token is meant to be backed by one yen held in reserve, and verified customers of the issuer could mint new GYEN by depositing yen or redeem GYEN for yen at a one-to-one rate. The issuer describes GYEN as the “first regulated digital JPY.” Its sister token, ZUSD, is pegged to the US dollar and is being wound down on the same schedule.

GYEN is natively issued on Ethereum (as an ERC-20 token), Solana and Stellar, according to the issuer’s multi-chain page. CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko also list a GYEN contract on Arbitrum, a network that does not appear on the issuer’s list. GYEN was built to circulate outside Japan: GMO Internet’s May 2021 release on the Binance listing said it was not offered to residents of Japan, and the issuer’s site says GYEN and ZUSD cannot be publicly offered or traded in the European Union. For a general explainer, see our stablecoin glossary entry.

Who Issues GYEN: GMO Trust and Its Regulator

GYEN is issued by GMO-Z.com Trust Company, Inc., which was established in 2020 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of GMO Internet Group, a Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime company. The NYDFS granted GMO Trust a limited purpose trust charter in December 2020, and the regulator’s list of regulated entities still shows that charter. GYEN (listed as “GMO JPY”) and ZUSD appear on the NYDFS Greenlist with an asterisk that marks stablecoins approved for issuance in New York.

Binance listed GYEN on May 12, 2021, according to a GMO Internet release, and Bitstamp listed GYEN and ZUSD in June 2024. Neither exchange appears among GYEN’s markets on CoinGecko today.

GYEN Wind-Down: Key Dates

On May 15, 2026, GMO Trust announced that it had begun a voluntary dissolution under New York Banking Law §605 and an orderly wind-down of GYEN and ZUSD. It gave no other reason.

How to Redeem GYEN, and What Happens After November 11

GMO Trust’s own notices on its support site are the authoritative source for the redemption process. Holders should follow those instructions, check any redemption link against the issuer’s website, and contact GMO Trust directly with questions. The summary below is not legal, tax or financial advice.

Before the deadline. Holders with a GMO Trust account can redeem at par through the GMO Trust platform: 1 GYEN for 1 yen, with no redemption fee and a minimum of 100 GYEN. Proceeds are paid in yen by bank wire, and a non-yen bank account can receive them with conversion by the receiving bank. New accounts are opened only to redeem existing holdings, after identity checks, so the issuer advises applying early.

After the deadline. According to the issuer’s mandatory redemption notice, GYEN still held on a supported blockchain will be redeemed by sending USDC to the same wallet on the same chain, worth the yen amount converted at the November 12 exchange rate, and the GYEN will be removed from circulation. Tokens bridged to unsupported blockchains receive no USDC, wallets are screened for anti-money-laundering and operational risk, and payments below the minimum USDC transfer amount are not processed. Amounts that cannot be delivered “will be retained and subsequently addressed in accordance with applicable law.” Stellar holders need a USDC trustline and a small XLM reserve.

Security. GMO Trust says it “will never ask you to connect a Wallet, sign a transaction, or pay a fee,” and that its emails come only from @gmo-trust.com. Any site asking for a wallet signature to “redeem GYEN” should be treated as a likely scam. Our guide to crypto wallets explains how self-custody works.

How the Yen Peg Works

The peg rests on redemption, not on an algorithm. If GYEN trades below 1 yen, an account holder can buy it and redeem it for a full yen (less a 0.10% fee before May 15, 2026); if it trades above, they could (until May 15, 2026) mint new GYEN at 1 yen and sell it. Only verified customers with bank accounts can do this, so when few of them are active and trading is thin, the market price can drift far from 1 yen even while reserves fully cover the tokens.

Its US dollar price also moves with the exchange rate: a move from 150 to 160 yen per dollar lowers GYEN’s dollar value by about 6% without any change to the peg.

How Well Has the GYEN Peg Held?

May 2021, Binance listing. CoinMarketCap records GYEN’s all-time high of $0.345 on May 12, 2021, the day Binance listed it, far above the value of one yen, which has been worth less than one US cent throughout GYEN’s life.

November 2021, Coinbase. According to Coinbase’s post-mortem, GYEN broke parity on Coinbase from November 16 to 19, 2021, peaking at about ¥7.48 on November 17. On CoinMarketCap, GYEN closed at $0.0234 on November 17, about 2.7 times its November 14 close, then fell about 56% the next day. Separately, a Coinbase data error on November 19 misreported some GYEN and POWR purchases by a factor of 100; Coinbase disabled GYEN trading that day, restored full trading by December 13 and said the two issues “had nothing to do with each other.”

Lawsuits. In a class action in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (No. 1:23-cv-08431), buyers alleged that GYEN was not pegged as represented. On February 17, 2025, the court denied GMO Trust’s motion to dismiss the New York and California consumer-protection claims, according to class counsel. The court granted final approval of a $6.75 million settlement with GMO Trust on May 27, 2026, according to class counsel and Bloomberg Law. The settlement covers people who purchased or acquired GYEN in New York or California while it was unpegged between December 29, 2020 and October 10, 2025 and lost money, according to the settlement website. Buyers also sued Coinbase in California in 2022; in January 2023 the court sent those claims to arbitration, according to the law firms involved.

2025 to 2026. In the first half of 2025, about 89% of GYEN’s daily closes on CoinMarketCap were within 5% of 1 yen. Tracked volume then collapsed, from a median of about ¥1.1 million a day through May 6, 2025 to about ¥16,000 a day from May 7 to June 13. In 2026 the gap widened.

After the wind-down notice, GYEN closed at about ¥1.00 on May 15 and 16, then swung widely. It fell to intraday lows near ¥0.35 on June 12, closed at ¥0.36 on June 28, about 64% below par, and closed mostly between about ¥0.43 and ¥0.53 until July 10, with brief jumps above ¥0.75. Later it closed above par every day from September 24 to October 12, reaching ¥1.35 on September 28. These moves happened on very thin trading (CoinMarketCap shows about $11 of 24-hour volume on October 28), so they reflect small trades rather than the redemption value. The issuer says secondary-market prices may be well above or below par and do not change the par value available through redemption.

GYEN Reserves and Attestations

GMO Trust publishes monthly attestation reports by The Network Firm LLP, an independent accounting firm, on its attestation page, going back to March 2021. The latest listed report covers August 2026 and is dated September 9, 2026.

The reports state that the reserves were held as Japanese yen at FDIC-insured US depository institutions, and for August the accountant gave an unmodified opinion that management’s assertions were fairly stated. The reports give combined totals across Ethereum, Solana and Stellar, not a per-chain breakdown. ZUSD, the dollar token, fell from 726,850 to 476,899 tokens outstanding during August.

GYEN Supply and Market Cap Now

GYEN outstanding fell by about 84.8 million tokens, or 8%, between April 30 and August 31, 2026, so about 92% of the April supply was still outstanding at the end of August, despite fee-free redemption at par since May 15. CoinGecko now shows about 934.8 million GYEN in circulation, about 11% below the April 30 level. At par, that supply is worth about ¥935 million, or about $5.9 million at the Bank of Japan rate. CoinMarketCap’s $12.3 million market cap relies on a circulating supply of about 2.1 billion GYEN, which the issuer’s attestations do not support.

Where GYEN Trades Now

Coinbase’s October 20 status page notice says GYEN sent to a Coinbase deposit address after the conversion may be unrecoverable and that tax consequences may apply. GMO Trust notes that third-party venues let holders swap GYEN for USDC, but “a swap is not a Redemption” and does not deliver par value. Listing and delisting claims are best checked against primary sources, as explained in our guide on how to verify crypto news and rumors.

GYEN vs JPYC and Other Yen Stablecoins

JPYC Inc. appears on the Financial Services Agency’s list of funds transfer service providers and began issuing its yen stablecoin in late October 2025, according to its CoinMarketCap profile. Its total supply on CoinMarketCap is 8.8 billion tokens, of which JPYC self-reports about 2.6 billion in circulation, roughly 2.8 times GYEN’s remaining supply. Our earlier report on Japan approving the first yen-pegged stablecoin by JPYC covers the background.

Japan’s Payment Services Act treats fiat-backed stablecoins as electronic payment instruments. An FSA overview of the framework states that “only banks, fund transfer service providers, and trust companies are entitled to issue” such stablecoins and that intermediaries must register. The Act was amended again in June 2025, and on May 22, 2026 the Cabinet Order and Cabinet Office Orders for that amendment were promulgated, according to the FSA, including what it calls “development of the provisions concerning electronic payment instruments and cryptoassets.” Banks are also testing yen tokens: in November 2025 the FSA set up a Payment Innovation Project to support payment-related proof-of-concept experiments, and its first supported project is a joint stablecoin effort by three major Japanese banks, according to reports.

GYEN was never part of this domestic framework, since it was issued in New York and not offered to residents of Japan.

What “GYEN Price Prediction” Means for a Stablecoin

For a working stablecoin, the price in dollars is set by the exchange rate, not by crypto market demand. One GYEN at par equals 1 divided by the USD/JPY rate. The Bank of Japan’s 5 p.m. Tokyo rate on October 28, 2026 was 157.78 to 157.80 yen per dollar, and the Federal Reserve’s H.10 release shows 156.87 for October 23.

These are arithmetic illustrations, not forecasts. We do not publish GYEN price targets.

For GYEN in particular, forecasts for 2027 or 2030 no longer apply, because the redemption process described above takes eligible tokens out of circulation. Any GYEN trade after that would involve tokens the issuer no longer redeems directly. For forecasts on assets that are expected to keep trading, see our crypto price predictions.

Key Risks of GYEN

• Deadline risk: direct redemption at par ends on November 11, 2026, and identity checks for new accounts take time
• Chain risk: the issuer says GYEN bridged to unsupported blockchains receives no USDC in the mandatory redemption. Arbitrum, where CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko list a GYEN contract, is not on the issuer’s list of supported chains, so holders there should check their position with GMO Trust
• Exchange-rate risk: USDC paid under the mandatory redemption depends on the November 12 USD/JPY rate
• Liquidity risk: 24-hour volume is between about $11 and $80, and market prices have ranged from ¥0.36 to ¥1.35 in 2026
• Data risk: CoinMarketCap’s supply and market cap are about double what the attestations support
• Scam risk: GMO Trust never asks holders to connect a wallet, sign a transaction or pay a fee

Data sources: GMO-Z.com Trust Company (website, wind-down, redemption and mandatory redemption notices, multi-chain page and attestation reports by The Network Firm LLP), the New York State Department of Financial Services, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve H.10 release, Japan’s Financial Services Agency, GMO Internet Group, Coinbase (status page notice and November 2021 post-mortem), CoinMarketCap (prices in US dollars and yen, supply, volume, JPYC data), CoinGecko (price, supply, markets), the GYEN settlement website, Bloomberg Law, Berman Tabacco, Paul Weiss and Proskauer, as of October 28, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is GYEN crypto?
GYEN is a stablecoin pegged to the Japanese yen, issued by GMO-Z.com Trust Company, a New York trust company owned by Japan’s GMO Internet Group and supervised by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Each GYEN is backed by one yen in reserve. It runs on Ethereum, Solana and Stellar, and its issuer is now winding it down.

Is GYEN being discontinued?
Yes. GMO Trust stopped minting GYEN and its dollar token ZUSD on May 15, 2026, after starting a voluntary dissolution under New York banking law. Holders can redeem GYEN at par until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on November 11, 2026. Tokens left on supported blockchains after that are subject to a mandatory redemption paid in USDC, and the platform will then close.

How do I redeem GYEN?
Follow the instructions in GMO Trust’s own wind-down notices: open or use a GMO Trust account, complete identity checks and request a redemption before 11:59 p.m. ET on November 11, 2026. The issuer pays 1 yen per GYEN by bank wire, with no fee and a minimum of 100 GYEN. GMO Trust never asks holders to connect a wallet, sign a transaction or pay a fee.

Where can I buy or sell GYEN?
GYEN can no longer be minted, and market trading is very thin. Coinbase ended GYEN sends and receives on October 26, 2026 and is converting balances on its platform into USDC from October 26 to 30. CoinGecko lists small GYEN pools on Uniswap and StellarTerm, but GMO Trust says a swap is not a redemption. Par value comes only through GMO Trust redemption before November 11, 2026.

What is the GYEN price prediction for 2026 and beyond?
GYEN has no meaningful price prediction because its dollar value equals 1 divided by the USD/JPY rate. At the Bank of Japan’s rate of about 157.8 yen per dollar on October 28, 2026, one GYEN at par is worth about $0.0063. After November 11, eligible tokens on supported blockchains are redeemed in USDC at the November 12 rate and removed from circulation.

Has GYEN ever lost its peg?
Yes, several times on the open market. On Coinbase it reached about 7.48 yen in November 2021, according to Coinbase. In 2026, CoinMarketCap daily closes ranged from about 0.36 yen on June 28 to 1.35 yen on September 28 on very thin volume. Direct redemption through the issuer stayed at par, with a 0.10% fee until May 15, 2026, and reserves exceeded tokens outstanding in the latest attestation.

Is GYEN backed by reserves?
Yes. Monthly attestations by The Network Firm LLP report yen reserves for GYEN, and the latest ones show reserves above tokens outstanding. On August 31, 2026, GMO Trust reported 969.5 million GYEN outstanding against about 978.3 million yen held at FDIC-insured US institutions, a surplus of about 0.9%. The accountant gave an unmodified opinion on management’s assertions for that report.

What is the difference between GYEN and JPYC?
GYEN is issued by a New York trust company for markets outside Japan and is being wound down in 2026. JPYC is issued by JPYC Inc., a Tokyo company registered with Japan’s Kanto Finance Bureau as a funds transfer service provider in August 2025. JPYC is active on Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche and Kaia, with a total supply of about 8.8 billion tokens.

Nothing in this article is legal, tax or financial advice. GYEN holders should follow GMO Trust’s own instructions. Cryptocurrency investments carry substantial risk.