
News Link • European Union
EIB's fifth digital bond feeds into Eurosystem wholesale CBDC explorations
• Currency InsiderThe EIB, which is the lending arm of the 27-member European Union (EU), issued a euro-denominated digital bond using a public blockchain in 2021 and the first euro-denominated 'digitally native' bond using private blockchain technology in November 2022. A couple of months later it launched a digital bond denominated in pound sterling using a combination of private and public blockchains. It followed that up with a 'climate awareness bond' issuance using blockchain last year.
This fifth issuance is breaking new ground as it is feeding into Eurosystem exploratory work on the use of new technologies for the settlement of wholesale financial transactions recorded on distributed-ledger technology (DLT) platforms in central bank money: its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) programme.