According to CoinDesk, the Republic of Slovenia has issued a sovereign digital bond, marking the first instance of such an issuance by a European Union member state. The 30 million-euro ($32.5 million) bond, carrying a 3.65% coupon, is part of the European Central Bank's (ECB) money settlement experimentation program. The bond, which matures on November 25, was settled on-chain through the Bank of France's tokenized cash system using wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). Wholesale CBDC is a digital token designed for use by financial institutions rather than consumers.

The ECB completed its first test of wholesale CBDC settlement in May and plans to conduct further trials and experiments in the coming months. The initial experiment, conducted by Austria's central bank, focused on the tokenization and simulated delivery-versus-payment settlement of government bonds in a secondary market transaction against central bank money.

The Slovenian government emphasized the significance of these initial transactions and experiments with wholesale tokenized central bank money, stating that they represent an important step towards greater transparency and efficiency in financial markets through wider technology adoption. While the current value issued and traded is not substantial, the government expects the importance of distributed ledger technology to grow significantly in the coming years.

BNP Paribas served as the global coordinator and sole bookrunner for the bond issuance, as well as the distributed ledger technology platform operator of Neobonds, its private tokenization platform built with Digital Asset's Daml and leveraging the Canton blockchain.