Slovenia has issued the first digital sovereign bond in the European Union. The bond was issued and placed by BNP Paribas. It had a nominal size of 30 million euros ($32.5 million) with a 3.65% coupon and maturity date of 25 November, according to the Slovenian Finance Ministry.
Cointelegraph reports that BNP Paribas used its Neobonds platform for the 25 July bond issue. Neobonds is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) tool that uses Digital Asset’s Daml language on the Canton blockchain. Settlement was carried out on the Banque de France’s DL3S interoperability system.
The bond issue is part of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) wholesale central bank money settlement experimentation program. That program announced the beginning of its second phase in June. Three interoperability solutions are included in the program.
Besides France’s DL3S, Deutsche Bundesbank’s Trigger Solution and Banca d’Italia’s TIPS Hash-link are being trialed. BNP Paribas CIB chief operating officer Philippe Maillard said in a statement:
“This transaction was made possible by leveraging the strength of BNP Paribas’ integrated and diversified model across business lines, including Global Markets, ALM Treasury, Securities Services, FIC Official Institutions Coverage and BNP Paribas Asset Management.”
Besides Neobonds, BNP Paribas operates the AssetFoundry, a tokenization platform based on Ethereum. BNP Paribas was one of the original participants in the Canton Network, along with such institutions as Cboe Global Markets, Paxos, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and Deloitte, when the blockchain debuted in 2023.
