Guggenheim Treasury Securities (GTS) has issued $20 million in digital commercial paper on the Ethereum blockchain. GTS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guggenheim Capital, with the group having over $320 billion in assets under management (AUM). For the show, he partnered with Zeconomy, the developers of AmpFi.Digital.
The commercial paper received a P-1 rating from Moody’s.
Zeconomy claims that digital issuance addresses DeFi challenges, such as poor credit quality and compliance issues.
Although Zeconomy claims it is the first Ethereum digital trading paper, numerous issuances have taken place, including on public blockchains.
That said, most have used private blockchains. Siemens recently issued a small commercial paper on the SWIAT permissioned blockchain, settled using JP Morgan’s JPM Coin. Earlier this year, Rabobank completed €2 billion in commercial paper transactions using blockchain platform Ubermorgen.
However, there have been issuances on public blockchains, such as the January launch of $100 million by the Hong Kong arm of Chinese company GF Securities on Ethereum. Startup Obligate, backed by the Swiss exchange SIX, is known for its commercial paper offerings and uses the public Polygon blockchain.
In Europe, Orange and Citi launched a blockchain-based central securities depository (CSD) for commercial paper, ID2S, in 2019. Participants included CACEIS Bank, Crédit Agricole CIB, Orange Bank and Natixis. But it closed its doors two years later.
