The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has launched 'Demat 2.0', a pilot program for corporate bond settlement utilizing blockchain and central bank digital currency (CBDC), CoinDesk reported. Corporate bonds will be issued as tokens on a distributed ledger and linked to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) institutional digital rupee, allowing for simultaneous bond transfer and payment. Existing conditions such as interest rates, maturity, and investor rights for the bonds will remain unchanged, and future pilot projects are expected to include secondary market trading and individual investor participation. Additionally, under the program, three companies including REC, L&T, and IIFL issued bonds totaling 10.25 billion rupees (approximately 116 million US dollars). This project is reportedly part of the government's efforts to build digital financial infrastructure to modernize India's corporate bond market, which is valued at approximately 620 billion US dollars.
