Europe led in DLT-based bond issuance in 2024, issuing a total of €1.7 billion in digital bonds. This is one of the key findings of the inaugural DLT Capital Market report recently published by the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME). As a part of the association’s new data report series on DLT-based capital markets, the paper will present a semi-annual analysis of “the size and growth of the global market in DLT issuance and related secondary market activities”.
Behind Europe, Asia came in second in DLT-based bond issuance last year with €1.1 billion worth of digital bonds issued. The report attributes Europe’s strong performance to the DLT trials undertaken by the European Central Bank (ECB) and Swiss National Bank (SNB), which achieved €1.8 billion in total issuance in 2024. The trials also included issuances by US-based entities.
Could do better
Overall, €3 billion of fixed income instruments were issued globally with DLT in 2024, the report reveals. This is a 260 per cent increase from the €848 million issued in 2023. However, the paper considers this “still sub-scale” after considering the total size of fixed income markets.
Green DLT bond issuance, at €483 million, represented approximately 16 per cent of the €3 billion in DLT fixed income instruments issuance.
The new report series aims to “bridge the data gap by offering timely insights into the evolution of the global DLT-based capital market activities”. It’s expected to provide “a comprehensive overview of the primary DLT fixed income market, secondary markets and valuations, repo transactions, as well as an overview of the size of the tokenised fund industry and that of other tokenised asset markets”.
