Digital Bond Issuance Announcements and Equity Market Reaction: An Event Study Analysis with Comparison to Conventional Bond Markets

This thesis examines how equity markets react to the announcement of native digital bonds, debt instruments issued, registered and settled directly on distributed ledger infrastructures by corporate entities. Starting from 38 issuance events announced between 2017 and 2026, the study applies a market-model event study to a final sample of 31 digital bond announcements and to 28 conventional bonds of the same issuers, selected as matched counterparts. Abnormal returns are tested at the individual level, at the aggregate level and through pairwise differences within each issuer. The individually significant reactions do not exceed what chance would produce and have no common direction, no average abnormal return is significant in either sample, and the reactions to digital and conventional bonds of the same firm do not differ systematically. At the current stage of the market, equity investors do not appear to price the technology of issuance, a conclusion that must be read in light of the small sample and the limited power of the tests. This work provides an exploratory empirical contribution to the literature on financial and technological innovation in debt markets and a framework for future research on decentralized fixed-income markets.