The Dutch ABN Amro has made a real splash in the crypto landscape. It is the first Dutch bank to register a digital green bond on the public blockchain. In particular, Polygon (MATIC), the scaling network based on Ethereum (ETH), was used for this purpose. This article covers all the details of this homegrown crypto news.
Green bonds on the blockchain
On September 12, ABN Amro announced in a press release that it had secured financing of 5 million euros for the real estate investor Vesteda with the innovative bond. According to the bank, the money will be used to (re)finance green assets, “in line with Vesteda’s Green Finance Framework.” The bondholder is DekaBank, one of the largest financial service providers in Germany.
Bonds are debt instruments that can be issued by companies, governments, or other entities to raise capital. Green bonds, as the name suggests, are a means of raising funds that will be used to invest in projects or companies that are sustainable and have a positive impact on the environment.
Ownership of the bond is recorded on the blockchain in the form of tokens. After purchasing the debt instrument, DekaBank received the tokens. ABN Amro pointed this out Private key, which provides access to, stores and secures the tokens. It uses Fireblocks, a fintech company specializing in digital asset security.
Frits Vervoort, CFO of Vestada said the following about the digital bond issue:
“It was a learning experience for Vestada to issue a digital green bond on the public blockchain. We gained valuable experience and knowledge about how blockchain can help us raise finance and the benefits it brings.”
The green bond was issued as an ERC3643 token via Tokeny, an infrastructure platform that Polygon uses to enable financial institutions to trade traditional assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate and funds. tokenizeN
ABN Amro in the crypto world
ABN Amro also had previous experience in digital bonds, including buying and selling a digital bond from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and facilitating the issuance of digital bonds for APOC, a Couch SME client.
It will most likely not be the last time ABN Amro commits to blockchain technology. This is what Olivier Aartsen, director, said Debt capital markets (DCM) the following:
“We will continue to advise other customers and investors in this area and want to support further digital bond issues in the future.”
