Euro stablecoin released on Stellar by one of Europe’s oldest banks. Germany’s Bankhaus von der Heydt, or BVDH, has debuted a Euro stablecoin on the Stellar network.
The bank alleges that the token is the first of its type to be released by a financial entity. The EURB stablecoin, which has gone live today, was built on the Stellar blockchain in collaboration with the tokenization and digital asset custody technology provider Bitbond.
The commodity, which is fully regulated and backed one-for-one with Euros, can not be openly traded on exchanges due to strict regulatory requirements and the requirements of Know Your Customer.
If a customer wants to acquire the stablecoin, a fiat currency transfer is held in an escrow account at the BVDH, which triggers the issuance of the EURB. The announcement states that developers of financial applications can immediately utilize the token to settle asset transfers on-chain. The underlying platform, built by Bitbond, gives full control of the stablecoin’s security to the bank, including mechanisms for burning and minting the token.
BVDH, which was established in 1754, has traditionally focused on institutional clients in securitization-related transactions. The choice to use Stellar and Bitbond (which have been working together since 2019) was made after almost a year of exploring distributed ledger technology. BVDH managing director Philipp Doppelhammer explained “We were drawn to Bitbond and Stellar due to the ease in which assets are issued and managed on the network.”
Doppelhammer stated that the EURB’s first use case will be for “cross-border money transfers” for blockchain payments company SatoshiPay’s business customers.
The lack of a fully licensed bank backing today’s stablecoins is their main shortfall, BVDH business development manager Lukas Weniger stated.
Bitbond founder and CEO Radoslav Albrecht noted “Banks normally wouldn’t feel comfortable using [stablecoins] like Tether or USDC, due to the potential counterparty risk that is behind them […] They prefer to work with stablecoins issued by banks, and the same is true for institutional investors.”
The German regulator Federal Financial Supervisory Authority has already provided their approval for Bitbond to issue tokenized bonds on Stellar.
[image: Tabrez Syed]
