Australia’s central bank says stablecoins, bank deposit tokens can coexist in $17 billion tokenization drive

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has moved from questioning the role of tokenization to actively planning its implementation, as revealed in Assistant Governor Brad Jones’ recent speech based on Project Acacia findings. The RBA now views tokenization adoption as inevitable, estimating potential annual efficiency gains of AU$24 billion ($16.7 billion) for the Australian economy. The project examined various use cases, including government and corporate bonds, utilizing wholesale central bank digital currency, exchange settlement account balances, stablecoins, and bank deposit tokens for settlement. Jones envisions stablecoins serving smaller, newer markets, while bank deposit tokens, backed by regulation, will dominate larger markets. The RBA acknowledges challenges like network effects and regulatory uncertainty and plans to collaborate with the Council of Financial Regulators, the DFCRC, and industry participants through initiatives like a digital financial market infrastructure sandbox and a Regulator-Industry Tokenisation Advisory Group to address these issues. Industry participants see a wholesale CBDC as helpful but not essential, citing the growth of tokenized repo markets in the U.S.

(Source：The Block)