Reserve Bank of Australia set to explore Digital Currency

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will explore the usage and consequences of a wholesale form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) using distributed ledger technology (DLT) — blockchain.

For undertaking this work, the RBA is partnering with the National Australia Bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, investment advisory firm Perpetual, and blockchain company ConsenSys Software.

The project will lead to the development of a proof-of-concept (POC) for the issuance of a tokenized form of CBDC. This will be used by wholesale market participants for the settlement, funding, and repayment of a tokenized syndicated loan on an Ethereum-based distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. Also, it will be used to explore the consequences of ‘atomic’ delivery-versus-payment settlement on such platform as well as other potential automation and programmability features of tokenized CBDC and financial assets.

According to the Assistant Governor (Financial System) Michele Bullock, the main aim of this project is to explore the consequences of a CBDC for risk management, efficiency, and innovation in wholesale financial market transactions. Thus Australia is going forward with testing the future of a wholesale CBDC in their payments system.

The project is expected to be finished by the end of 2020 and the parties intend to publish their report with its main findings during the first half of 2021. For more info stay tuned by subscribing to us here
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