UniCredit, a pan-European banking group, has completed a strategic €4m investment in BlockInvest, a blockchain infrastructure company, acquiring approximately a 16% stake in the firm.
The deal sees UniCredit take a minority position in BlockInvest as part of a broader effort to advance the adoption of on-chain financial solutions across its key markets. The two organisations have an established working relationship, having previously collaborated on a number of transactions that set operational benchmarks in Italy under the country’s FinTech Law — including the country’s first natively digital minibond and, more recently, the first tokenised structured note on a public blockchain for the wealth segment.
The investment comes as the tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA) continues to reshape how financial instruments are issued and managed. The global on-chain finance market is estimated to represent an opportunity of around €18 trillion by 2033, with Europe positioned to play a leading role in setting the global standard for tokenisation, supported by regulatory frameworks including the DLT Pilot Regime and MiCAR, as well as infrastructure initiatives led by the ECB.
BlockInvest provides a digital assets infrastructure focused on merging the programmability of distributed ledgers with the compliance requirements of regulated financial markets. Its platform is designed to support the native issuance of digital financial instruments and aims to become a reference standard for digital assets interoperability at a European level, offering access to the web3 ecosystem for issuers and other financial institutions.
Through the investment, UniCredit intends to strengthen its digital assets capabilities with a view to rolling out tokenised financial solutions across its wider group. BlockInvest’s infrastructure has demonstrated the ability to handle complex instruments while significantly reducing settlement times and providing a level of traceability not achievable through traditional clearing systems.
BlockInvest CEO and co-founder Lorenzo Rigatti said, “UniCredit investment is the recognition of a rigorous and ambitious growth path. We are facing a paradigm shift where technological innovation is no longer an ancillary element, but the very backbone of the market. This strategic partnership allows us to integrate our solutions into the workflows of one of the leading European banks, transforming our vision into a consolidated market standard ready to scale… one block at a time.”
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