Australia’s central bank sees future for tokenisation in wholesale financial markets

[SYDNEY] Australia’s central bank sees a future for tokenisation in wholesale financial markets and is planning a technological sandbox where industry players can try out products, a senior official said on Wednesday (Mar 25).

In a speech in Sydney, Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) assistant governor Brad Jones said the central bank would explore how a new sandbox in a longer-term and stage-gated environment could better support innovation in the wholesale markets, compared with short-term pilots.

The RBA will also step up research on how new forms of money and settlement infrastructure could enhance wholesale cross-border payments.

Jones said Project Acacia, the central bank’s research project for tokenised asset settlement, explored 20 use cases involving assets such as government and corporate bonds, repo, bank term deposits and investment funds.

The settlement was conducted through private money like stablecoins and bank deposit tokens, as well as central bank money such as wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), and exchange settlement account balances.

Jones said the project revealed growing industry interest in the issuance of tokenised private money and a “sequential” role for central bank money and settlement infrastructure upgrades.

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The central bank has been studying whether to issue a CBDC of its own and if it would help facilitate atomic settlement in tokenised asset markets. REUTERS