Six months have passed since Societe General issued its very first bond on a public blockchain. It still has to offer the instruments to its clients or to take advantage of the whole potential of the smart contract, which mediates the sale. Although, this French financial institution with a big reputation claims that it didn’t forget regarding the €100 million bond or approximately $110 million. They sold the bond to itself, and they’ve said that they’re still quite interested in trialing the blockchain technology in the long run.
“Our intention isn’t to resell this at this particular time,” as said by Jean-Marc Stenger, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Societe General subsidiary Forge Digital Capital Markets. That happens to be one of many startups that are a part of the “intrapreneurial” program in this financial institution. This bank has placed covered bonds on the well-known cryptocurrency, Ethereum, all the way back in April this year. It is one of a couple of established companies that experimented with the issuing debt with the help of one of the biggest public blockchains by market cap.
In November last year, BBVA has recorded a massive $150 million loan on ETH. This September, Santander has settled both sides of a colossal $20 million bond transaction on ETH, which means that it didn’t just issue a token to represent the debt, but it has also settled the price amount with the assist of other tokens representing cash. Although Societe General is still the owner of the bond which has made, the lender is going to supervise if the Ethereum’s smart contract can indeed automate the usual functions of issuing debt.
“We’re demonstrating that every event of the bond has been written in the smart contract, and every event is managed by it,” by the words of Stenger. “We’re going to see if this particular technology becomes the future.”
With the word “event,” Jean-Marc Stenger means that the before-mentioned smart contract is successfully managing the parameters of the issuance. This happens to include a certain mechanism that extends the maturity of the bond, which was issued by one of the best financial institutions in the world, Societe General. That is an option intended for the issuer, in this case, SocGen, to call the security back if it is necessary and also an automated calculation of the fantastic semi-annual coupon that is paid to the bondholder.