BNP Paribas, Europe’s largest bank, launched a tokenized money market fund on the public Ethereum blockchain, marking a notable deployment of tokenization in traditional finance. The project uses a tightly controlled permissioned access model to satisfy strict regulatory requirements and is conducted via the bank’s AssetFoundry platform to test how public blockchains can support regulated fund structures. The bank describes the initiative as a controlled, one-off intra-group experiment to validate end-to-end processes from issuance to transfer on a regulated framework. Notably, the initiative follows a previous BNP Paribas pilot that utilized a private blockchain in Luxembourg.
The second issuance using public blockchain infrastructure demonstrates how tokenization can improve operational efficiency and security within a regulated framework. The shares are restricted to a whitelist of authorized participants, reflecting stringent compliance standards. The move signals a cautious institutional shift toward public networks to capture broader interoperability.
BNP Paribas now sits with peers BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Fidelity Investments in deploying tokenized money market funds on Ethereum, signaling a broader shift toward Ethereum as a settlement layer for traditional finance. Ethereum currently dominates the tokenized asset market, with real-world assets on the network surpassing $15 billion in market capitalization.
Leave a Reply