Onchain capital markets

Onchain capital markets cover the issuing, trading, settling and servicing of securities, such as bonds, fund units and shares, on a distributed ledger instead of through the chain of separate systems a conventional trade runs through today: an issuing bank, a central securities depository such as Clearstream, a custodian, an exchange and a central counterparty. On a distributed ledger, the register that proves ownership and the system that moves that ownership can be the same infrastructure, which is what lets a trade settle in minutes instead of the one to two business days a conventional securities trade still needs today, a change market participants call atomic settlement or T+0. Matthias Voelkel, CEO of Boerse Stuttgart Group, sketches the path in Europe's Post-Trade Problem, an episode of SeturionX's Inside Digital Assets podcast: trading can stay off-chain largely as it is, while DLT turns settlement into an open, pan-European layer in place of national silos, where a cross-border trade still passes through several intermediaries.

The cash side of the trade needs its own onchain form to reach that speed: a tokenized deposit, a euro stablecoin or, in the pilots run so far, a token representing central bank money. Without that, the securities leg can settle onchain while the cash leg still waits on a conventional payment system, which cancels most of the time saved. Onchain finance covers this wider shift of financial records onto a blockchain; onchain capital markets is the part of it built around securities and their trading infrastructure.

In Germany, the legal basis is the Elektronische Wertpapiergesetz (eWpG), in force since 2021, which lets an issuer create a bond, a fund unit or a share without a paper certificate and record it in a crypto securities register that can run on a blockchain. A security recorded this way is a crypto security under the eWpG; it carries the same legal rights as a paper security, and running its register is a licensed financial service that needs BaFin authorization.

At EU level, the DLT Pilot Regime, Regulation (EU) 2022/858, lets a licensed operator combine trading and settlement of tokenized securities in one system, under supervised exemptions from parts of the standard securities rulebook. The regime issues three kinds of license: a DLT multilateral trading facility (DLT MTF) for trading only, a DLT settlement system (DLT SS) for settlement only, and a DLT trading and settlement system (DLT TSS) that combines both, the license type 21X in Frankfurt holds as the first firm in the EU to receive one, granted by BaFin in December 2024 (Ledger Insights, December 2024).

A distributed ledger only knows what a transaction writes to it, so a tokenized bond or fund still needs an outside price, a net asset value or a reserve figure to reach the chain from somewhere. Chainlink, one of several oracle networks active in finance, carries that data onto a blockchain; its work with Swift tested whether banks could move tokenized assets across chains through their existing Swift connection, and its Smart NAV product with DTCC publishes a fund's net asset value to several blockchains from one connection. Other oracle providers active in finance are covered on Finance Loop's oracle networks page.

Moving a token between different blockchains, or connecting a bank's existing payment network to one, is a separate problem called interoperability. Swift ran its own tokenization experiments with banks including BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon and Citi and with market infrastructures including Euroclear, Clearstream and DTCC. Identity and compliance layers, such as a whitelist of approved wallet addresses or the ERC-3643 token standard built for permissioned securities, decide who can hold and transfer a token in the first place, since most onchain capital markets infrastructure is built for regulated investors, not anonymous holders.

The cash leg has its own set of rails. The Eurosystem's Pontes and Appia services link market DLT platforms to TARGET Services so a wholesale DLT transaction can settle in central bank money. Banks also use tokenized deposits and MiCA-licensed euro stablecoins such as EURAU and EURC for the same job. Keeping the register itself is a licensed role too: a crypto securities registrar under the eWpG needs BaFin authorization, the license Cashlink was the first company in Germany to hold.

Deutsche Börse Group runs D7, a platform for tokenized securities under its post-trade arm Clearstream, and its Market Data + Services unit publishes real-time exchange data onchain through Chainlink's DataLink service. 21X in Frankfurt holds the EU's first DLT TSS license, granted by BaFin in December 2024 after an 18-month review involving the Deutsche Bundesbank, ESMA and the ECB, and processes transactions on the Polygon blockchain (Ledger Insights).

Boerse Stuttgart Digital built Seturion, a pan-European settlement platform for tokenized assets, applied to BaFin for its own DLT Pilot Regime license, and partnered with Nasdaq on post-trade infrastructure in March 2026 (Blockworks). Cashlink was the first company in Germany to receive a BaFin license to manage a crypto securities register, and later added a crypto custody license under the Banking Act. Tangany holds BaFin-regulated custody licenses and, since March 2026, a PSD2-based license for e-money tokens, securing more than 3 billion euros in digital assets for over 60 institutional clients (Yahoo Finance).

Deutsche Bank bought part of the Siemens digital bond and plans its own MiCA-licensed custody service for digital assets. DekaBank, DZ Bank and Commerzbank ran Germany's shared Commercial Bank Money Token pilot for tokenized corporate payments, and DZ Bank worked with KfW to carry out the first issuance of a crypto security whose full lifecycle, from creation to payment settlement, ran on blockchain infrastructure (DZ Bank). LBBW partnered with SWIAT, the platform DekaBank co-founded, in the ECB's wholesale DLT settlement trials (Ledger Insights).

Siemens issued a digital bond as a crypto security under the eWpG, sold directly to investors including Union Investment, which has also bought digital bonds from the European Investment Bank (Ledger Insights). KfW issued its own digital bonds under the eWpG as part of the ECB's wholesale DLT settlement trials, with Cashlink acting as registrar and Boerse Stuttgart Digital providing custody, settled in central bank money through the Deutsche Bundesbank's Trigger Solution.

Outside Germany, Societe Generale FORGE issues the MiCA-licensed euro stablecoin EUR CoinVertible, now integrated into Boerse Stuttgart Digital's trading and custody systems (Crowdfund Insider). In May 2026 SG-FORGE joined Seturion together with Societe Generale and flatexDEGIRO and provides the euro and US dollar stablecoins that settle trades on the platform (Seturion media release). Euroclear describes its own shift toward what it calls a data and digital-enabled financial market infrastructure, and explored USD stablecoin settlement for tokenized commercial paper with Societe Generale FORGE (Euroclear). The Banque de France built its own wholesale central bank digital currency solution, tested alongside the Deutsche Bundesbank's Trigger Solution in the Eurosystem's wholesale DLT trials, which processed more than 200 transactions worth about 1.59 billion euros between May and November 2024.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people who build and use onchain capital markets infrastructure: banks, exchanges, asset managers and the fintechs that register, custody and settle tokenized securities. It has a strategic cooperation with 21X, the Frankfurt trading venue that holds the EU's first DLT TSS license, and has covered its work at a Point Zero Forum side event in Zurich, where 21X, Franklin Templeton, DFNS, AMINA and Chainlink spoke on tokenized asset infrastructure. At Capital & Code in Frankfurt, Standard Chartered Luxembourg, the Solana Foundation, Allfunds Blockchain and Utila discuss how funds are distributed and traded on institutional blockchain rails. Onchain capital markets sit in Finance Loop's Investment & Digital Assets track, with events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

Onchain capital markets means issuing, trading, settling and servicing securities such as bonds, fund units and shares on a distributed ledger instead of through the separate systems a conventional trade runs through today. The security keeps the same legal rights; the register and the settlement process move onto a blockchain.

Under the EU's DLT Pilot Regime, a DLT multilateral trading facility (DLT MTF) is licensed for trading tokenized securities only. A DLT settlement system (DLT SS) is licensed for settlement only. A DLT trading and settlement system (DLT TSS) combines both functions under one license, which is what lets a trade settle without moving between separate trading and settlement companies. 21X in Frankfurt holds the first DLT TSS license issued in the EU.

Atomic settlement means the securities leg and the cash leg of a trade settle in a single, indivisible transaction on the ledger, so neither side can deliver without the other paying. It needs both sides of the trade in a form the ledger can move: a tokenized security on one leg and a tokenized deposit, a euro stablecoin or a central bank money token on the other. The Eurosystem's Pontes and Appia services and the Deutsche Bundesbank's Trigger Solution both link market DLT platforms to central bank money for this purpose.