A handful of government-backed financial institutions have been exploring tokenization use cases to revolutionize traditional financial systems. For i
A handful of government-backed financial institutions have been exploring tokenization use cases to revolutionize traditional financial systems. For instance, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Volcanic bond project has been in the works for over a year and aims to raise $1 billion from investors with tokenized bonds to build a Bitcoin city.
The Central Bank of Russia has also expressed interest in tokenized off-chain assets. In addition, the Israeli Ministry of Finance, together with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), recently announced the testing of a blockchain-backed platform for digital bond trading.
Cointelegraph Research’s 2021 Security Token Report found that most securities will be tokenized by 2030. While notable, the potential behind tokenized government bonds appears to be massive, as these assets can speed up settlement time while freeing up liquidity within traditional financial systems.
Brian Estes, CEO of Off the Chain Capital and a member of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, told Cointelegraph that tokenizing a bond allows for faster settlement, which leads to reduced costs.
“The time of ‘capital at risk’ becomes reduced. This capital can then be freed up and used for higher productive use,” he said. Factors such as these have become especially important as inflation levels rise, impacting liquidity levels within traditional financial systems across the globe.
Touching on this point, Yael Tamar, CEO and co-founder of SolidBlock — a platform enabling asset-backed tokenization — told Cointelegraph that tokenization increases liquidity by transferring the economic value of a real-world asset to tokens that can be exchanged for cash when liquidity is needed.
“Because tokens communicate with financial platforms via a blockchain infrastructure, it becomes easier and cheaper to aggregate them into structured products. As a result, the whole system becomes more efficient,” she said.
To put this in perspective, Orly Grinfeld, executive vice president and head of clearing at TASE, told Cointelegraph that TASE is conducting a proof-of-concept with Israel’s Ministry of Finance to demonstrate atomic settlement, or the instant exchange of assets.
In order to demonstrate this, Grinfeld explained that TASE is using the VMware Blockchain for the Ethereum network as the foundation for its beta digital exchange platform. She added that TASE will use a payment token backed by the Israeli shekel at a one-to-one ratio to conduct transactions across the blockchain network.
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In addition, she noted that Israel’s Ministry of Finance will issue a real series of Israeli government bonds as tokenized assets. A live test will then be performed during the first quarter of 2023 to demonstrate atomic settlements of tokenized bonds. Grinfeld said:
“Everything will look real during TASE’s test with the Israel’s Ministry of Finance. The auction will be performed through Bloomberg’s Bond Auction system and the payment token will be used to settle transactions on the VMware Blockchain for Ethereum network.”
If the test goes as planned, Grinfeld expects settlement time for digital bond trading to occur the same day trades are executed. “Transactions made on day T (trade day) will settle on day T instead of T+2 (trade date plus two days), saving the need for collateral,” she said. Such a concept would therefore demonstrate the real-world value add that blockchain technology could bring to traditional financial systems.
Tamar further explained that the process of listing bonds and making them available to institutions or the public is very complex and involves many intermediaries.
“First the loan instruments need to be created by a financial institution working with the borrower (in this case, the government), which will be processing the loans, receiving the funds, channeling them to the borrower and paying the interest to the lender. The bond processing company is also in charge of accounting and reporting as well as risk management,” she said.
Echoing Grinfeld, Tamar noted that settlement time can take days, stating that bonds are structured into large portfolios and then transferred between various banks and institutions as a part of a settlement between them.
Given these complexities, Tamar believes that it’s logical to issue tokenized government bonds across a blockchain platform. In fact, findings from a study conducted by the crypto asset management platform Finoa and Cashlink show that tokenized assets, such as government bonds, could result in 35%–65% cost-savings across the entire financial system value chain.
From a broader perspective, Perianne Boring, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, told Cointelegraph that tokenized bonds also highlight how technology-driven innovations in financial instruments can provide investors with alternative financial products.
“Generally, such bonds would…
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