Altcoin News: Santander Bank Issued $20 Million Bond on Ethereum

September 12, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Spanish banking giant Santander issued and settled the $20 million bond on the Ethereum blockchain, CoinDesk writes.

Santander claims to be the first institution to use the public blockchain to manage all aspects of a bond issue. For the calculation, they used a separate set of ERC20 tokens that reflect fiat assets on the custodial account.

Previously, a similar bond was issued by the World Bank, but in its case, a private version of Ethereum was used. In addition, the French financial group Societe Generale used the Ethereum public blockchain to issue its bond, however, nothing was reported then about the transfer of fiat assets to the blockchain. As in the case of Societe Generale, Santander did not attract outside investors to the process.

“For Santander, this is really much more of a technology innovation issue than a pure financial issue. We regard this an important first step that will be followed by more complex transactions,” said Antonio Torio, Head of Funding for Santander.

Answering a question about whether a bank can use its store to work, for example, with Bitcoin, a bank representative said that it is technically possible, but not part of the organization’s plans, as it is interested in technology, but not in cryptocurrencies themselves.

The Santander initiative and others like it indicate that over time, the banking industry has begun to trust Ethereum technology more and more.

“I think it’s becoming apparent that Ethereum is just part of the internet,” said a bank spokesman.

Author: Marko Vidrih