Societe Generale trials tokenised bond sale

Societe Generale SA is trialling the sale of tokenised bonds in an attempt to introduce digital assets to banking, Bloomberg writes. According to last month’s statement, SocGen “explores a more efficient process for bond issuance.’’

SocGen sold carried out a sale of €100 million ($112 million) of tokenised covered bonds; it sold the bonds to itself to test how blockchain technology can be used to make transactions cheaper and faster. Currently, most bonds take two business days to settle. 

The transaction, which took place on the Ethereum blockchain, was awarded the highest credit rating from Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. It was piloted by the bank's so-called "internal startup."

The market itself, although not unified, is worth $2 trillion.