Digital Bond Issuance Tops EUR 6.4bn in 2026; Repo Volume Rises 62%

Global distributed ledger technology (DLT) fixed-income issuance reached EUR 6.4 billion in the year to date through 2026, a 30% premium over the entirety of 2025, according to the latest market data report from the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME).

The headline figure, drawn from AFME's DLT data series, tracks activity across digital bond venues — platforms where issuance, settlement and servicing occur on a shared ledger rather than through conventional book-entry (an entry in a central register tracking ownership). The 30% gap arrived ahead of schedule, marking a clear inflection past the prior year's full tally.

What does the AFME data measure?

Three streams dominate the report.

• DLT fixed-income issuance: EUR 6.4bn year-to-date 2026, up 30% from full-year 2025
• Tokenised assets: USD 38.8bn outstanding, of which USD 14.9bn sits in tokenised US Treasuries
• DLT repo activity: USD 360bn daily average, versus USD 222bn in 2025

Asia absorbed 68% of the year's digital bond issuance. A single deal — the Hong Kong government's HK$20bn (approximately EUR 2.2bn) digital bond — set a sovereign record and accounted for roughly one-third of regional volume. European-headquartered platforms, despite that Asian deal dominance, supported approximately 98% of global issuance, a structural detail that desks building cross-border execution stacks cannot ignore.

Takeaway: The figures track issuance, tokenised assets and repo notional — three distinct inputs that desks must read separately.

What does the breakdown mean for execution?

Buy-side and sell-side traders operating across digital and conventional rails face a measurable divergence. Sovereign participation at scale — measured, not asserted — points to a maturing use case for primary-market distribution (the initial sale of newly issued securities to investors). Larger average deal sizes compress funding costs for issuers; for traders, the consequence runs toward a deeper, more tradable secondary-market footprint, assuming listings and dealer obligations follow.

The tokenised US Treasuries subtotal — USD 14.9bn — has separate implications. Treasury tokenisation offers a natively programmable collateral base (a pledgeable asset delivered directly on the ledger), relevant to repo desks and securities-lending books. AFME's USD 360bn daily repo average, a 62% rise from 2025's USD 222bn, suggests collateral mobility is moving on-ledger at scale.

Takeaway: Sovereign-led issuance deepens secondary liquidity; tokenised Treasuries bring programmable collateral to repo and lending.

What is measured, and what is asserted?

AFME's volume and issuance numbers are measured. The report's directional language — "moving beyond experimentation," "practical capital markets use cases" — frames the data rather than reports it. Coen Ter Wal, Managing Director of Technology & Operations at AFME, drew that distinction directly.

"The record level of digital bond issuance and the continued expansion of tokenised assets and repo activity show that DLT is moving beyond isolated experiments into practical capital markets use cases," Ter Wal said. "The question is increasingly how these markets can scale, rather than whether the technology can be put to practical use. The next phase will depend on greater interoperability, supportive regulatory frameworks and infrastructure that allows these markets to scale safely and efficiently."

The interoperability barrier sits at the heart of execution risk. A fragmented ledger landscape forces desks to maintain parallel reconciliation (process of matching internal records against counterparty records) and custody arrangements, raising operational cost per trade.

Takeaway: Volume numbers stand alone; the scaling narrative remains a forward assertion by AFME leadership.

Where do tokenised deposits and stablecoins sit?

The report identified at least 14 collaborative tokenised-deposit initiatives worldwide, with several advancing past pilot into live transactions. AFME does not separate live from testing volumes in aggregate — a gap that complicates direct measurement.

The global stablecoin market — reserve-backed or algorithmic digital tokens pegged to fiat currency (government-issued money such as the US dollar) — remained broadly stable at roughly USD 300bn. Dollar-denominated stablecoins accounted for approximately USD 294bn of the total; euro-denominated stablecoins totalled roughly USD 0.8bn. Bank participation is expected to expand through initiatives including Qivalis, the European banking consortium building a euro payment token.

The euro stablecoin figure stands apart. At USD 0.8bn against USD 294bn in dollar supply, the gap is structural, not cyclical — a measured input that limits the euro token's viability as cross-border settlement collateral under the current architecture.

Takeaway: Deposit pilots are multiplying, but a thin euro stablecoin base narrows near-term use as settlement collateral.

The next AFME DLT data release, expected later in 2026, will indicate whether sovereign-issuance momentum and tokenised-collateral growth extend or plateau.