Major French bank Société Générale issues green bonds on Ethereum ─ RWA tokenization progresses in Europe | CoinDesk JAPAN

As demand for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization increases among traditional financial institutions, French banking giant Societe Generale is issuing its first tokenized green bond on the Ethereum network. completed.

Green bonds worth €10 million

Societe Generale announced in a press release on the 4th that it has issued a digital green bond token worth 10 million euros (approximately 1.6 billion yen, equivalent to 160 yen per euro) registered by SG-FORGE, the bank’s digital asset arm. did. Traditional financial institutions AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) and Generali Investments purchased the green bond.

Société Générale plans to use the net proceeds from the bond sale to finance sustainable activities or refinance.

Will the tokenized asset market reach $10 trillion?

The issuance highlights traditional finance (TradFi) companies’ growing appetite for leveraging blockchain-based technologies such as tokenization and stablecoins. JPMorgan and Apollo made headlines last month when they demonstrated with several crypto companies how asset managers can tokenize funds on the blockchain.

Investment management company 21.co has predicted that as RWA tokenization increases, the market size of tokenized assets could reach $10 trillion (1,450 trillion yen, equivalent to 145 yen to the dollar).

Advantages of transparency and speed

According to Société Générale, the digital format of the bonds will improve transparency, traceability and speed up trading and settlement.

Société Générale said the bond issuance is “a step towards the use of blockchain as a data repository and authentication tool for issuers and investors to increase transparency in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance)”. It’s a step,” he said.

AXA IM, the asset management arm of French insurance giant AXA, is using EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), a euro-pegged stablecoin led by SG-FORGE, as part of a joint blockchain experiment. Purchased bonds worth €5 million for AXA France. This was announced in a separate press release issued by AXA IM on the 4th.

Laurence Arnold, Head of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives at AXA IM, said: “The aim of this initiative, carried out in collaboration with SG-FORGE, is to support the use of digital bonds as a payment asset for purchasing digital bonds. “The idea was to be able to experiment with the use of table coins.”

｜Translation and editing: Rinan Hayashi
｜Image: Shutterstock
｜Original text: Tokenization of RWAs Gets Push in Europe as AXA, Generali Buys SocGen’s Green Bonds on Ethereum