Paris is about to host Europe’s newest financial experiment - a stock market built entirely on blockchain.
Lightning Stock Exchange (Lise) has received the green light from French regulators to operate what it calls the continent’s first tokenized equity platform for small and mid-sized businesses.
The approval came from the ACPR, France’s banking and insurance watchdog, through a special DLT Trading and Settlement license. The authorization allows Lise to merge trading and clearing on a single blockchain system – a setup that challenges the decades-old structure of traditional exchanges.
The exchange is the creation of Kriptown, a fintech startup backed by major French banks BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, and Crédit Agricole’s Caceis. Lise’s managing director Mark Kepeneghian said the company’s goal is simple: to make raising capital as quick and transparent as sending crypto.
Instead of relying on conventional IPOs, Lise plans to issue and trade company shares as tokenized assets, cutting both costs and bureaucracy. The first digital listings are expected in early 2026, followed by at least ten more offerings in 2027.
Kepeneghian described the initiative as a “rethink of how equity markets should work in a digital world.” The exchange will begin onboarding issuers later this year to prepare for launch.
This development comes under the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime, a 2023 framework designed to test blockchain’s role in securities markets. If successful, Lise’s model could become a blueprint for how future exchanges operate – connecting investors directly to tokenized assets without traditional intermediaries.
Caceis, which recently invested in Kriptown, said its stake reflects a broader strategy to push Europe’s financial system toward tokenization.
The timing couldn’t be more significant. With exchanges like Kraken and Gemini already experimenting with tokenized securities, Europe’s financial hubs are racing to modernize. For Paris, Lise might just be the boldest step yet – a move to anchor France at the center of the world’s blockchain-based capital markets.
