BNP Paribas tests public blockchain infrastructure for money market fund tokenization

PANews, February 24 – According to Crowdfundinsider, BNP Paribas Asset Management has issued tokenized shares of a France-registered money market fund on a public blockchain. Announced on February 20, the project marks a significant step in the bank’s exploration of tokenization technology, transitioning from a private ledger to the Ethereum public network.

The project adopts a permissioned access model on Ethereum, allowing only pre-approved, regulated participants to hold or transfer tokenized shares, thereby leveraging the transparency and security of the public blockchain while ensuring compliance with financial regulations. The experiment integrates multiple business lines of BNP Paribas: the asset management company acts as the fund issuer, the securities services division serves as the transfer agent and is responsible for wallet infrastructure and private key custody, and the AssetFoundry platform of the corporate and investment bank handles the tokenization process and provides connectivity to Ethereum. This pilot builds on previous experience issuing tokenized money market funds on a private blockchain in Luxembourg, aiming to evaluate technical and operational models by testing different approaches.