Euroclear Finalizing DLT Bond Settlement Platform, Staffer Says

Euroclear, a major player in traditional finance securities trading, could finalize a new platform for securities based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) as soon as this year, one of its staffers said on Thursday.

The initiative builds on a recent trial led by Euroclear with the French central bank to use blockchain for bond transactions, with a central bank digital currency used as payment – extending the idea beyond a mere experiment to cover live transfers of security tokens.

“Euroclear is building and is finalizing the first minimum viable product of a DLT platform for issuance and settlement of digital bonds,” Bart Garré, a Legal Counsel for the financial infrastructure giant, told CoinDesk at an event in Brussels.

Garré told CoinDesk that there was no definitive timeline available, but that the platform could be launched as soon as this year. The new trading environment will link to legacy bond markets to ensure there wasn’t reduced liquidity, he added.

The project did not necessarily depend on the changes brought by the European Union’s DLT pilot regime, a series of regulatory relaxations designed to ease securities trading using crypto-style technology which took effect just last week, Garré said. But, Garré added, it was running into a host of existing legal assumptions, including what constitutes an account or a message to transfer funds, as well as concepts in property law.

“How do you transfer ownership, do you need to change the law to be able to do that?”, Garré asked, adding that to take collateral “can be done with a very minor change in the financial collateral law.”

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