Israel’s Ministry of Finance and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange will begin the pilot trial of a blockchain-backed platform for digital bonds trading with the trial expected to finish by Q1 2023.
A blockchain-based platform for digital bonds trading will be tested by the Israeli Ministry of Finance in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), digital asset custody company Fireblock, and American software solutions firm VMware. The Ministry of Finance will issue these bonds.
On October 19, the news was announced in the regional media. The new initiative, known as “Eden,” aims to lower expenses and streamline the process of issuing national bonds. According to Yali Rothenberg, the Accountant General,
“I believe that blockchain-based technologies are here to stay, and over time will permeate the core of the financial markets, thoroughly and deeply altering them. It is our duty to constantly examine new technologies and methodologies.”
The project platform will deliver a new series of tokenized government bonds to the participating banks’ e-wallets during the live test, moving the funds held in virtual currencies to the Israeli government’s e-wallet. The particular digital currencies that will be utilized in the live test are not disclosed. By the end of Q1 2023, the pilot project is anticipated to be finished.
There are not many nations and international organizations that have digitalized their relationships. In 2018, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development raised A$110 million for two-year blockchain bonds, respectively. The European Investment Bank followed the example by issuing digital bonds worth 100 million euros in 2021.
Despite El Salvador being the most well-known national example, which links its “Bitcoin bonds” to a bigger crypto-centered economic strategy, Colombia and the Philippines have also dabbled in digitalizing the government bonds. The U.K. declared its desire to investigate blockchain for government bonds in 2022.
