Europe’s largest asset manager Amundi tokenizes equity index fund on Ethereum

Amundi already tested blockchain rails on money-market products before turning to equities, following BlackRock's 2024 move to put its BUIDL fund on Ethereum. The Core STOXX Europe 600 launch extends that same settlement model to a passive equity index of 600 companies, built with asset servicer CACEIS rather than through a new on-chain security structure. It keeps Amundi, Europe's largest asset manager, inside the established pattern of large institutions experimenting with public blockchains for back-office functions.

Investors still buy through the same banks, platforms and advisers they always used; nothing changes in how shares are sold or redeemed. What changes is the record-keeping layer: ownership of fund units is now tracked on Ethereum instead of a traditional registrar database. There are no tokenized shares of the underlying 600 companies to trade separately, so no new secondary market opens for retail buyers chasing round-the-clock liquidity.

Calling this 'tokenization' stretches the word: the fund is not decentralized, not permissionless, and Amundi and CACEIS retain full control over issuance and settlement. The real gain is operational, cheaper and faster record-keeping for administrators, not disintermediation of the fund industry. That gap between the blockchain label and the centralized reality is the same tension critics raise about other institutional tokenized products, where a public ledger changes plumbing without changing who holds the keys.

Watch whether Amundi pushes tokenized share classes beyond the STOXX Europe 600 into other index or active funds, and whether CACEIS's infrastructure becomes the template other European asset managers adopt. A second signal is regulatory: how this share class is treated under the EU's DLT Pilot Regime will shape whether on-chain fund units can eventually trade on recognized secondary venues rather than staying locked to traditional distribution.

Ethereum fell 0.9% in the 4 hours after the first headline, after falling 1.3% in the 2 hours before.

48 prices, one every 30 minutes · The move was larger before the first headline than after: an observation, not an explanation. The market also moves on things nobody publishes.