Italian Central Bank Partners with Polygon and Fireblocks to Support DeFi Tokenization Project

The Bank of Italy's Milano Hub innovation center is set to offer support to a project developed by Cetif Advisory, aimed at researching a security token ecosystem for institutional decentralized finance (DeFi).

This project does not have any commercialization objectives; instead, it seeks to expand the analysis of security tokens on secondary markets.

Imanuel Baharier, the general manager of Cetif Advisory, emphasized the importance of creating a secure and transparent operating environment for supervised entities within the DeFi space.

The primary goal of the project is to enable institutional market participants to engage in DeFi activities while adhering to regulatory guidelines.

Additionally, it will further enhance Cetif Advisory's Lionity platform, described as an "institutional grade automated market maker."

Cetif Advisory is a spinoff of the Cetif Research Centre at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. The collaboration includes Polygon Labs, Fireblocks, and other organizations, with participation from Italian banks, asset management companies, and ten other financial institutions.

Out of numerous proposals, the Cetif Advisory project was selected during the second call for submissions at the Milano Hub. Among the various fintech projects considered, seven were approved for support.

Starting this month, the chosen project will be backed by the Milano Hub for six months, receiving expert guidance and extensive regulatory research assistance.

The field of securities tokenization is gaining traction in the realm of blockchain technology. According to Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions, the market for tokenized securities could potentially reach a value of $4 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030.

The report indicates that private equity and venture capital sectors are likely to lead in tokenization, followed by real estate.

It is worth noting that security tokens are digital representations of real-world asset ownership.