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17.12.2025
Italy’s First Tokenized SME Bond
Italy’s First Tokenized SME Bond
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Italy has issued its first SME minibond using public blockchain technology, combining traditional bond features with a fully digital structure. The deal involves major banks, a partial state guarantee, and a relatively small corporate issuer.  A €5 million minibond may seem small, but its digital format has attracted attention across financial markets. Are European investors about to see more bonds issued this way?

Italy has just taken a notable step in modernizing parts of its financial markets with the issuance of the country’s first minibond fully created and recorded on a public blockchain. The €5 million bond was launched on 11 December 2025 by E4 Computer Engineering, a technology company active in high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, and was structured and subscribed by UniCredit and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP).

The bond carries a six-year tenor with one year of pre-amortization, and a 50 percent guarantee from SACE, Italian state company, but the main breakthrough lies in the fact that the entire instrument has been issued, administered, and recorded digitally on-chain. Tokenization and workflow digitization were carried out through the BlockInvest platform. The minibond has been registered on the Polygon PoS public blockchain, with Weltix acting as the authorized registry manager to comply with Italy’s FinTech regulatory framework.

This minibond represents the first application of tokenization to an SME-targeted debt instrument on a public blockchain in the country and signals a broader strategic push to modernize capital-raising tools available to SMEs. The partners believe that such digital instruments could eventually be replicated across sectors and ticket sizes, enabling faster settlement and lower issuance costs.

For retail bond investors, this case means that they may soon gain access to a much broader range of digital bonds, extending beyond issues from large banks and blue-chip companies to high-yield debt issued by small and medium-sized businesses. As regulated tokenization platforms and digital registries mature, these instruments could become easier to distribute and trade.

Author
Vladimir Tarantaev, CFA, PMP
Vladimir Tarantaev, a CFA expert in fixed income, has a strong track record in credit analysis at CIS banks and a diverse background in math-physics and astronomy.
Vladimir Tarantaev
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Author
Vladimir Tarantaev, CFA, PMP
Vladimir Tarantaev, a CFA expert in fixed income, has a strong track record in credit analysis at CIS banks and a diverse background in math-physics and astronomy.
Vladimir Tarantaev
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