France Issues €100 Million Digital Bond Using Central Bank's DLT Platform

According to Odaily, the French Depository Bank (CDC) has recently issued a €100 million ($108 million) digital bond, utilizing the Bank of France's DL3S DLT platform and its pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) for settlement. This transaction is part of the European Central Bank's wholesale DLT settlement pilot, which is set to conclude this month. The Bank of France has opted to describe the wCBDC as a tokenized representation of central bank money, rather than using the term wholesale CBDC. For the CDC's issuance, it was necessary to synchronize the issuance of digital native notes (DNN) on Euroclear's D-FMI platform with the settlement on the central bank's DL3S. Under French law, DNNs are issued in bearer form. Additionally, the French pilot CBDC solution has been employed in several other digital bond issuances. These include a €30 million sovereign bond issued by Slovenia and small commercial papers issued by a Dutch bank, among other DL3S experiments involving simulations.