The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) have announced the financial institutions selected to participate in their research project, Project Acacia, which explores tokenized asset settlement.
Leading the 24 use cases are major Australian banks ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), and Westpac. The project’s goal is to investigate how various forms of digital money and related infrastructure could foster the growth of Australia’s wholesale tokenized asset markets.
Nineteen of the use cases will involve real money and real asset transactions (pilot use cases), while five will use simulated transactions (proof-of-concept use cases). Testing is scheduled for the latter half of 2025, with a report on the findings expected in early 2026.
Other key participants in the project include the Australian Bond Exchange, Australian Payments Plus, Canvas, Catena Digital, Fireblocks, Forte, Imperium Markets, Northern Trust, NotCentralized, ProspEx, and Zerocap.
To facilitate the project, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has granted regulatory relief to participants. This relief will enable the responsible testing of tokenized asset transactions, including those using central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), among participants and a select number of financial institutions in the coming months.
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