Major financial companies (DTCC, LSEG, Euroclear, Tradeweb, Citadel Securities, and Societe Generale) conducted their first cross-border intraday repo transaction with tokenized gilts on the Canton Network blockchain. The transaction was also the first in which gilts were exchanged for deposits in a currency other than the pound sterling.
Gilts are UK government bonds. Their volume is about $2 trillion.
A repo is a short-term loan secured by securities: one party sells them and simultaneously agrees to buy them back after a fixed period, most often on the same day. The difference between the sale price and the repurchase price is the actual cost of the loan. Banks and trading companies use repos to quickly raise liquidity against existing assets.