The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) has today published its inaugural Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Capital Market report, analysing the size and growth of the global market in DLT issuance and related secondary market activities.  

The report, which will be published on a semi-annual basis, aims to bridge a data gap by offering timely insights into the evolution of the global DLT-based capital market activities and provides a comprehensive overview of the primary DLT fixed income market, secondary markets and valuations, repo transactions, as well as an overview of the size of the tokenised fund industry and that of other tokenised asset markets.

Key findings:

• In 2024, €3bn of fixed income instruments were issued globally with the use of DLT, a 260% increase from €848mn issued in 2023, but still sub-scale considering the total size of fixed income markets.
• Issuers based in Europe and Asia led by issued amount in 2024, originating €1.7bn and €1.1bn, respectively.  The issuance in Europe was strongly led by the DLT trials undertaken by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB), accumulating jointly a total of €1.8bn in 2024 (the Central Bank trials included issuance by European and US-based entities).
• A total of €483mn was issued in the form of green DLT bonds, representing 16% of the global DLT fixed income amount issued in 2024.

Julio Suarez, Head of Research at AFME, said: “We are very pleased to add our DLT Capital Market Report to our stable of regular data reports we publish to help support and advance wholesale capital markets in Europe.  Although the adoption of DLT in capital markets is currently limited relative to the size of the global market, its recent rapid growth and the emergence of new market participants and product offerings present substantial opportunities for future expansion.

“Undoubtedly, the DLT-based issuance of securities will continue to grow over time, and we are pleased to be the first association in Europe to regularly produce data on this growing asset class.” 

– Ends –