Accelerating Convergence Between Traditional and On-Chain Finance in 2026?

In 2025, the distance between traditional and on-chain finance has narrowed faster than anyone predicted. What once looked like parallel systems are now beginning to overlap, influenced by shared infrastructure, regulatory clarity and the rise of digital currencies supported by banks, central banks and leading crypto protocols.

In the United States, the regulatory landscape has undergone a major turning point in favor of digital assets, with the GENIUS ACT establishing a clear and stringent framework regarding stablecoins. In Europe, the shift also feels particularly tangible. 2025 marked the entry of blockchain into a regulated world, with the MiCA regulation. Banks are launching stablecoins and crypto offers, the digital euro design continues advancing and tokenization is moving from proof-of-concepts to mainstream adoption. Globally, stablecoins now move more value each day than many card networks. The result is a financial landscape where the defining characteristic of 2026 may be coexistence.

Societe Generale-FORGE (SG-FORGE), the subsidiary of Societe Generale Group dedicated to digital assets, has been at the center of this evolution since 2020. SG-FORGE’s early work included blockchain-based bond issuance inside regulated capital markets to the past year becoming the only subsidiary affiliated with a major global bank to issue regulated stablecoins in both euros and dollars.

"SG-FORGE has worked to bridge the gap between capital markets and digital assets by developing products and tools designed for a new financial ecosystem. 2026 might be the year of adoption, consolidation and bring the two worlds of finance into interaction more than ever,” said Jean-Marc Stenger, CEO of SG-FORGE.

The question is no longer whether convergence is possible, but what it will mean in the years ahead.

Financial ecosystems: The boundaries are blurring

The separation between banking infrastructure and blockchain once seemed absolute. Digital assets no longer operate outside the traditional economy. They are increasingly integrated into it, reinforcing the core financial infrastructure rather than simply trying to replace it.

2025 marked a turning point. Large financial institutions now treat digital assets not as a parallel universe, but as a continuation of capital markets in a new technical environment.

In Europe, the trend is especially pronounced. Bank-issued regulated stablecoins are entering circulation, reflecting both commercial demand and regulatory maturity. Today, euro-denominated stablecoins represent just over 0.2% of global market capitalization. It’s an imbalance that European institutions are already working on. By 2026, analysts expect several large banks to operate euro-based digital currency models, with stablecoins used for payments, settlement and treasury operations.

This development sits alongside the ongoing digital euro project at the European Central Bank. Whether the digital euro arrives as a wholesale instrument first or a retail instrument later, its presence will contribute to the blurring of on-chain and TradFi infrastructure.

This backdrop helps explain why SG-FORGE has adopted a visibly proactive approach. Its EUR CoinVertible and USD CoinVertible are regulated under the European Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, issued by the subsidiary of a tier-one banking group and backed by custody arrangements with globally trusted institutions. That positioning supports it in implementing a strategy that bridges technological innovation with the compliance expectations required for integration into Europe’s market infrastructure.

A concrete example of this convergence is the recent strategic partnership between Deutsche Börse Group and SG-FORGE that embeds CoinVertible stablecoins into Clearstream, enabling collateral management, settlement and eventually treasury functions. As noted by Deutsche Börse’s head of issuer services and new digital markets, Jens Hachmeister, “SG-FORGE’s stablecoins are reference products in Europe because they are regulated, have gained traction and create a bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance.”

SG-FORGE has also worked with Swift, the global interbank messaging system, to settle tokenized bonds on blockchain using fiat currency and its EUR stablecoin. By demonstrating the feasibility of key market operation use cases – issuance, delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement, coupon payments and redemption – this collaboration represents a major step toward a new era of digital asset interoperability.

The symbolism is hard to ignore. A core part of Europe’s financial plumbing is preparing to handle regulated stablecoins issued by a major bank. What was once theoretical integration is becoming operational reality.

Stablecoins: A growing role in the new financial ecosystem

If the first act of digital assets was speculation, the second act is utility. The growth of stablecoins, now the largest product category in crypto by usage, is redefining what moves across blockchains. According to Glassnode and Fasanara, the five largest stablecoins move more than $200 billion per day on average. That liquidity is no longer confined to crypto exchanges: It is entering payments, corporate treasuries and cross-border settlement systems.

This shift is happening at a moment when central banks and regulators are aligning on clear rules for issuance and governance. The result is accelerating adoption. Stablecoins have grown by more than 60% in the past year, with estimates suggesting the market could reach €500 billion to €2 trillion by 2030. That range reflects not only consumer behavior, but institutional demand for 24/7 settlement, programmable money and liquidity instruments that operate across networks.

“At Societe Generale-FORGE, we’ve developed EUR CoinVertible and USD CoinVertible issued on public blockchains within a strictly regulated framework. This is not a technological experiment: It is a new financial infrastructure, designed to meet the highest standards of transparency, traceability and security,” said Stenger.

The demand is real. Today, among financial players (crypto exchanges, brokers, PSPs, etc.), use cases for stablecoins are multiplying: cross-border payments, treasury management and settlement of tokenized securities. In some corridors, stablecoin flows already exceed those of traditional currencies. For a CAC 40 company, sending funds to its subsidiaries or receiving a client payment in stablecoins means moving from a three-day settlement to an instant, programmable, almost cost-free transaction.

Adoption is not just about technology. Launching a stablecoin is easy; building trust, liquidity and interoperability is another challenge. It requires connecting infrastructures, onboarding market platforms, liquidity providers and payment systems. This is deep technical work that demands not only expertise, rigor and vision but above all a network capable of generating flows.

It is also why SG-FORGE’s history in tokenization, spanning the European Investment Bank’s first blockchain bond issuance to more complex structures issued in the U.S., is strategically relevant.

Exchanges will evolve: Hybrid models could become the norm

The trading layer is also changing. Centralized exchanges have long been the backbone of digital asset markets, offering liquidity, regulated access, custody and compliance frameworks that institutional participants require. Decentralized exchanges, by contrast, empower users with custody of their assets and peer-to-pool execution, enabling use cases difficult to replicate in a centralized environment.

These two models may no longer compete directly, but merge into hybrid structures. Advances in interoperability, atomic swaps, bridges and liquidity aggregation will allow users, whether retail or institutional, to move seamlessly across networks and settlement layers.

This hybrid future is already visible. SG-FORGE’s stablecoins, launched on Ethereum, Solana and XRP Ledger, are now listed on several exchanges and brokers. They are deployed, through its partners, on the leading DeFi lending protocol Morpho as well as on the decentralised exchange Uniswap, offering a complementary approach to users.

For SG-FORGE and Stenger, that model reflects its mission “to bring to the traditional financial ecosystem the efficiency and speed we all see in the crypto ecosystem.”

Rather than picking a side, the company is positioning itself at the center of the convergence.

A financial ecosystem defined by convergence

In 2026, the question is to what degree will traditional and on-chain finance come together and reinforce each other. Stablecoins backed by regulated institutions could power on-chain settlement. Tokenized assets may sit inside Europe’s core infrastructure. Digital currencies issued by banks may coexist with central bank digital money. And exchanges may look less like isolated silos and more like interoperable liquidity networks.

In that world, SG-FORGE’s early investments in tokenization and regulated stablecoins point toward a scale-up phase: adoption, integration and a role as a European leader in what its team calls Finance 3.0, a financial architecture combining institutional safeguards with the speed and openness of blockchain.

To learn more about SG-FORGE’s EUR and USD CoinVertible stablecoins, visit the dedicated page: sgforge.com/product/coinvertible/

To read more recent SG-FORGE press releases, visit their news portal: https://www.sgforge.com/news/