Today, a collaboration between Societe Generale and Bitpanda for the stablecoin EURCV was announced.
The announcement was made on the official website of Société Générale-FORGE, which is the subsidiary of Societe Generale that initiated the collaboration with Bitpanda.
The crypto exchange Bitpanda
Bitpanda is one of the largest crypto exchanges in Europe.
It was founded in Vienna in 2014, and has a selection of over 2,800 digital assets, including more than 450 criptovalute, stocks, ETFs, precious metals, and commodities.
It is also one of the few European fintech unicorns, with a valuation of over one billion euros, and more than 5 million users.
Bitpanda already counts dozens of institutional partners and holds licenses in several countries. It also boasts a proven track record of collaboration with local regulatory authorities. In fact, the European exchange is one of the most strictly regulated in the sector.
At this point, it is not surprising that he was chosen by Societe Generale for this collaboration.
Societe Generale
Société Générale is the fourth largest French bank, and it is also the fourth largest by market capitalization among the banking groups in the Eurozone. In fact, it is considered a bank of fundamental importance for the banking system by the Financial Stability Board.
Founded as far back as 1864, it has an overall turnover exceeding 28 billion euros, and a good 117,000 employees. It is listed on the stock exchange on Euronext with the ticker GLE, and has a market capitalization of about 20 billion euros. It is a public company without any single majority shareholder, so much so that the single largest shareholder is BlackRock with just over 7.6%.
Societe Generale-FORGE (SG-FORGE) is its integrated and regulated subsidiary, authorized as an investment company to provide MiFID investment services, under the supervision of the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) and the supervision of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF).
It is also authorized as an electronic money institution by the ACPR and as a digital asset service provider (DASP) by the AMF.
He created his own institutional-level platform for digital assets compliant with all European regulations.
The collaboration between Bitpanda and Societe Generale for the stablecoin EURCV
The collaboration between SG-FORGE and Bitpanda concerns the stablecoin EUR CoinVertible (EURCV).
This is a stablecoin pegged to the euro, compliant with the new European crypto regulation MiCA, and fully collateralized in EUR. To date, there are already more than 33 million EURCV tokens in circulation on the Ethereum blockchain.
The collaboration foresees that EURCV will be listed on Bitpanda’s exchange in the coming weeks.
Furthermore, SG-FORGE will collaborate with Bitpanda also as a long-term partner with the common goal of increasing the adoption of digital assets.
The idea of this collaboration is to leverage Bitpanda’s large user base to provide European investors with a stable, secure, and accessible digital currency.
With this collaboration, the two companies would like to open the doors to the expansion of use cases for EURCV throughout Europe, such as cross-border payments, remittances, but also daily transactions.
The stablecoin market
The most used stablecoins in the world are those collateralized in dollars, such as USDT and USDC.
However, if these are particularly suitable for the American markets, and for transactions on a global level, the European market still lacks a large euro-collateralized stablecoin.
The largest by market capitalization currently is EURS (Stasis Euro), which however has only 138 million dollars in capitalization. This is just a little more than a thousandth of USDT.
EURCV with its 33 million is already the third largest stablecoin on the euro in the world by market capitalization, having even surpassed Tether’s EURT from this point of view.
In second place is EURC by Circle, the same issuer of USDC.
The comments on the new partnership between Bitpanda and Societe Generale
The announcement of the collaboration between SG-FORGE and Bitpanda was commented on in this way by the CEO of Societe Generale-FORGE, Jean-Marc Stenger:
“This partnership is a crucial step towards achieving our vision of making stablecoins a fundamental component of the global financial system. Together with Bitpanda, we are confident in our ability to offer European users a stable, secure, and accessible digital currency”.
The vice CEO of Bitpanda, Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, added:
“The EUR-based stablecoins are essential for the future of digital assets in Europe. The landscape is changing, integration with traditional finance is increasing, and fully regulated stablecoins are the bridge that will make it possible. We will collaborate with Societe Generale-FORGE to bring that future closer.”
