Fixed Income / Settlement

Tokenized Government Bonds Settlement

Tokenized bonds, also called digital bonds, are issued and settled on a distributed ledger. Hong Kong, the EIB, Siemens and, in September 2026, Hana Bank on Euroclear's D-FMI show how governments and companies now use them.

Summary

A tokenized bond, often called a digital bond, is a bond issued or recorded as a token on a distributed ledger, so issuance, settlement and the holder register run on the same system. Most issues so far are benchmark-sized deals by sovereigns, supranationals, banks and large corporates, and many settle the same day they price.

How it works

On 23 September 2026 Hana Bank issued a $100 million five-year floating-rate digitally native note on Euroclear's Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (D-FMI), the first by a Korean bank on the platform. Standard Chartered was sole structuring bank, lead manager and dealer. The note settled T+0 and became the first digital bond listed on SGX Group. Euroclear describes D-FMI as pairing digitally native issuance with the connectivity, liquidity and investor access of an established market infrastructure. It was issued under Hana's existing medium-term note programme, which shows digital bonds moving into standard funding tools rather than one-off pilots.

Governments are the largest issuers. Hong Kong priced about HK$10 billion of digital green bonds in November 2025, in HKD, RMB, USD and EUR tranches of two to five years, on HSBC Orion. Orders passed HK$130 billion. It was the government's third digital issue after 2023 and 2024, and the first digital bond anywhere to offer settlement in tokenized central bank money, e-HKD and e-CNY. In February 2026 HM Treasury picked HSBC Orion to host DIGIT, its pilot digital gilt, which HSBC says puts the UK on course to be the first G7 country to issue a blockchain-based sovereign bond.

The European Investment Bank has issued repeatedly since its first digital bond in April 2021. Its Project Venus bond of 29 November 2022 was a €100 million two-year issue on a private blockchain, led by Goldman Sachs, Santander and Societe Generale. It settled T+0 using central bank digital currency tokens representing euro central bank money, provided by the Banque de France and the Banque centrale du Luxembourg.

Corporates came in under national digital securities laws. Siemens issued a €60 million one-year bond on a public blockchain on 14 February 2023 under Germany's Electronic Securities Act (eWpG), with Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe as registrar and DekaBank, DZ Bank and Union Investment as buyers. The issue needed no paper global certificate and no central securities depository. Payment still used conventional money, since no digital euro existed, and the deal closed in two days.

The cash leg decides how far settlement improves. Siemens shortened settlement but still paid off-chain. The EIB and Hong Kong used tokenized central bank money to deliver bond and cash together. Hana's same-day settlement ran on a market infrastructure investors already connect to, with an exchange listing. Secondary trading in digital bonds is still thin, so settlement and access to existing investor workflows matter more for now than on-chain trading.

Business goal

Impact

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