The Bank of Canada and several of the country’s biggest banks have completed a live experiment showing how tokenized bonds and digital dollars can move together on a single ledger — a milestone for Canada’s move toward digital financial infrastructure.
What happened
- In Project Samara, Export Development Canada (EDC) issued a C$100 million (about $73 million) short-term security with a maturity under three months to a closed group of investors.
- The trial brought together RBC Dominion Securities, RBC Investor Services Trust and TD Securities (Toronto-Dominion Bank), and used a platform operated by RBC that supported the full bond lifecycle.
- The bond was issued in tokenized form on a distributed ledger, enabling on-ledger bidding, coupon payments, redemptions and secondary-market trading through the same system.
- The experiment also used tokenized versions of wholesale Canadian dollars created and managed by the Bank of Canada, letting bond and cash movements settle on the same ledger.
Why it matters
- The test demonstrates how tokenized securities and central-bank-managed digital cash can be integrated to streamline issuance, trading and settlement — potentially reducing frictions, shortening settlement times and cutting operational complexity.
- Using a single ledger for both assets and payments highlights how wholesale digital money (a CBDC-like instrument for banks and large institutions) could function in practice alongside tokenized securities.
Regulatory context
- The trial comes as Ottawa has signaled regulatory changes: the federal government’s November budget flagged plans for legislation on Canadian-dollar-backed stablecoins, with oversight expected to involve the Bank of Canada and rules focused on reserve backing, redemption policies and risk management.
- Regulators are tightening custody standards for digital assets, too. Canada’s investment regulator, CIRO, recently introduced a digital asset custody framework designed to strengthen how crypto assets are held by trading platforms and reduce risks such as hacking, fraud and insolvency after earlier industry failures.
Bottom line
Project Samara is a practical step toward bridging traditional capital markets and tokenized, ledger-based systems. By proving that tokenized bonds and Bank of Canada–issued wholesale digital dollars can coexist and settle on the same platform, the trial advances conversations about how digital cash, stablecoins and tokenized securities might be regulated and used in Canada’s financial system.
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