Société Générale expands crypto push as SG-FORGE signs 15 clients under EU rules

Société Générale (GLE)’s SG-FORGE has signed up 15 crypto clients as more regulated companies in Europe look for bank access after the EU’s new crypto rules took effect last year.

Jean-Marc Stenger, the CEO of SG-FORGE, reportedly said that the client base includes crypto exchanges, brokers, and wallet providers.

According to him, “more and more we see ​the connections we have established with crypto native companies through Société Générale-Forge as a good way ​to deliver just traditional banking services to this entity.”

Jean-Marc also said the links built with crypto-native companies are now helping the bank offer regular banking services to those businesses.

SocGen pushes banking services deeper into crypto companies

SocGen launched a euro-pegged stablecoin in 2023 and a dollar-pegged stablecoin in 2025. Other banks have taken a slower route. Some are working together to test the technology. Others are still waiting for stronger client demand before they go further.

Jean-Marc said SocGen is not part of the group of 10 European banks preparing to launch a euro stablecoin later this year. That group includes ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas. Even so, he said SocGen is holding bilateral talks with some of the banks involved.

The bank’s own tokens are regulated under the EU’s crypto framework, but usage is still small. SocGen’s euro stablecoin has just 105 million euros in circulation. That is tiny next to Tether and Circle’s USDC. Tether, based in El Salvador, says it has $187 billion of dollar-pegged tokens in circulation. USDC, issued by Circle in the United States, says it has $78.6 billion.

Jean-Marc said the gap could narrow if more crypto companies need euro stablecoins for retail customers in Europe and start looking for local alternatives instead of sticking with the current giants. He also said companies could end up using stablecoins to manage cash and collateral, though that use case is still more theory than fact.

RBC Capital Markets said last week that banks it surveyed saw stablecoins’ effect on liquidity and treasury management as “negligible.”

Exchanges chase new crypto markets as chain competition heats up

That slow take-up is landing in a much bigger fight over where financial activity will live in the next phase of crypto. The chief executive of VanEck said recently, “I think 2026, this is our thesis a little bit, is the year of the corporate chain wars.”

He then broke down what he meant: “Blockchains are shortened to chain. And it used to be okay. What am I going to use as the transaction mechanism for Wall Street in the future? Is it going to be Ethereum? Is it going to be Solana? And then a lot of people were starting their own chains.”

That question is now sitting before enterprises, financial institutions, and sovereign-adjacent players. They have to decide whether to build on a public chain, fork one, or launch their own. The choice could shape who keeps an edge for years.

Another race is underway to build perpetual crypto futures in the United States. Global crypto exchanges are trying to get ahead of an expected move by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to allow trading in the product, which is popular, risky, and mostly kept offshore so far.

Kraken’s parent said on Friday it would buy Bitnomial for up to $550 million, giving it a path into Bitnomial’s perpetual futures business.

Coinbase (COIN) has already launched long-dated futures contracts built to look like perpetuals. Robinhood (HOOD) has said it is exploring similar products in the United States.

Perpetual futures trading volume hit $61.7 trillion in 2025, up 29% from 2024, data from CryptoQuant showed.

A big share of that perpetual activity has happened on Hyperliquid, an offshore blockchain-based crypto exchange that has become a major venue for the contracts and lists products tied to different tokens.

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