The beginning of a new year is the right time to bring order, not just to goals, but to priorities and the strategic foundations we choose to build upon. In the world of tokenization, where attention is often captured by headlines or “firsts,” the real value almost always lies in what precedes them: the silent work, the people, and the decisions made long before a transaction ever sees the light of day.
For BlockInvest, 2025 was exactly that: a year in which ideas born some time ago took a concrete, regulated, and operational form in the markets.
A Journey from Afar: SMEs, Real Economy, and Minibonds
To truly understand the issuance of the first tokenized minibond on a public blockchain in Italy, one must look back to 2023. That year, BlockInvest was selected for the Bank of Italy’s Fintech Hub Call for Proposals, specifically with a project dedicated to the tokenization of minibonds to support the real economy and Italian SMEs.
The Fintech Hub workshops were more than a theoretical exercise. They shaped many of the architectural, operational, and process choices that now constitute the core of the BlockInvest platform. These ideas were tested, refined, and eventually transformed into a production-ready infrastructure.
However, innovation, especially in finance, is never just about technology. It is made of people and encounters that often seem accidental but prove decisive. Like our relationship with UniCredit, which began with a coffee-break conversation following a presentation on tokenization. What followed was months of intense collaboration: structuring the deal, defining processes, coordinating stakeholders, and identifying the right issuer.
The result was the first-ever issuance of a tokenized minibond in Italy on a public blockchain (Polygon PoS). Issued by E4 Computer Engineering under the Italian “Fintech Decree,” the operation saw UniCredit acting as arranger and investor alongside CDP. Weltix, recently authorized, acted as the Registrar (Responsabile del Registro), enabling the tokenized issuance via the BlockInvest platform. This transaction proved that tokenization is a concrete tool for supporting the Italian productive fabric, not just an abstract concept.
When Innovation Accelerates: UniCredit’s Wealth Issuance
Every project has its own story. While the minibond was a gradual journey, our subsequent operation was the exact opposite: a rapid alignment, almost a “coup de foudre.”
In just a few weeks, BlockInvest worked with multiple UniCredit teams, all fully engaged from day one, with a clear objective: to bring to market the first tokenized investment product issued by a bank in Italy for private clients before year-end.
The product was a structured note linked to 3M Euribor, simple in financial structure but complex in operational execution, as it was fully integrated into traditional banking processes. Once again, Weltix acted as the Registrar, managing the issuance and secondary market transactions. This operation marked a turning point: a major bank choosing a public blockchain as real infrastructure to serve its wealth management clients. It was a clear signal of market maturity.
Three Operations, One Infrastructure
Looking at the year as a whole, a key element emerges. In just a few months, using the same BlockInvest infrastructure, we realized three profoundly different operations:
- Equity tokenization of Weltix shares.
- A tokenized minibond for SME financing.
- A tokenized investment instrument for wealth clients issued by UniCredit.
Equity, debt, and investment products. Different audiences, different structures, and different goals, all built on the same technological rails.
This is perhaps the most relevant takeaway. The same infrastructure that supported real economy financing managed a wealth product without friction, handling all its inherent complexities: governance, compliance, banking processes, custody, and secondary market management. This demonstrates that the real priority is not the tokenization of a single instrument, but the construction of reliable, flexible, and regulated infrastructures capable of adapting to diverse use cases without starting from scratch every time.
Beyond Tokenization: Trust in Infrastructure
The most important lesson of this year is perhaps this: the point is not tokenization itself. The point is the trust that institutional players are beginning to place in these infrastructures.
When a bank decides to truly integrate a public blockchain into its core processes, when an issuer chooses to raise capital on-chain, and when a regulated operator takes a lead role in register management, it means the market is taking a definitive step forward.
This step is not made of announcements, but of real operations. 2025 added critical pieces to this journey, but the mosaic is much larger.
And as we often say at BlockInvest: one block at a time.
