European institutions have been across the board demonstrating their significance commitment in the blockchain space, leading the way in terms of use cases and products. Mainstream banks and institutions such as Societe Generale, European Investment Bank, Deutsche Börse, Siemens, ABN AMRO, UBS, BNP Paribas and even JP Morgan have all implemented their own blockchain-based projects in various fields.

Societé Générale, one of the biggest banks in France, launched the Ethereum contract for a euro-pegged stablecoin on April of this year. This stablecoin, known as EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), is made available only to a select group of institutional investors that have passed a rigorous Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering scrutiny. The coin is also compliant with the Basel Committee’s prudential treatment of crypto asset exposures, thus making it more attractive to European regulators.

The European Investment Bank, the primary lender of the European Union, also recently released its first sterling-denominated digital bond on Ethereum, as well as its sale of euro-denominated digital bonds earlier this year. German multinational Deutsche Börse also chose Google Cloud to back its institutional-grade digital securities platform D7, which is expected to support multiple blockchains and protocols in the near future.

German engineering giant Siemens also issued a $65 million one-year bond on Polygon in February, in compliance with the country’s Electronic Securities Act. The bond was bought by DekaBank, DZ Bank and Union Investment, among others. Dutch banking institution ABN AMRO utilized the Stellar blockchain in January to tokenize a bond worth nearly half a million dollars and partnered with Bitbond and Fireblocks to facilitate custody. Lastly, Swiss universal bank UBS issued a $370 million bond on the SIX Digital Exchange blockchain platform, but the stock-trading platform was cleared on either SDX or SIX.

Lastly, Banco Santander issued itself a $20 million bond, its first end-to-end blockchain on the Ethereum mainnet. The bond matured in a year and paid 1.98% returns every quarter. The banking institution is also reportedly experimenting a blockchain-based tokenization platform to facilitate the transfer of car ownerships in Brazil. To top it off, U.S. banking giant JP Morgan also executed a foreign transaction trial using Aave and Uniswap.

Clearly, there is a significant emergence of interest from European institutions in the blockchain sphere. This signals that the finance industry has faith in its potential and utility to revolutionize the world of business. From custody of digital assets to euro-pegged stablecoins to tokenization, European institutions are now among the groundbreaking major players in blockchain tech. Their involvement also emphasize the maturation of the ecosystem, with its capacity to host institutional-grade products and services.



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