Australian Reserve Bank Starts Exploring The Role Of CBDC

The Australian Reserve Bank starts exploring the role of CBDC in the Australian payments system according to their reports that we have in our latest altcoin news.

According to an announcement by the Australian Reserve Bank, the financial institution will be partnering with the Commonwealth Bank, the National Australia Bank, and the Financial services company Perpetual as well as with ConsenSys, in order to work on a project to explore the potential use of wholesale central bank digital currency by using the Ethereum-based distributed ledger technology.

The RBA stated that they will start researching the development of the proof of concept for the “issuance of a tokenized form of CBDC” as they mentioned specifically wholesale market participants that are using the digital currency for tokenized syndicated loans on the Distributed Ledger Technology platform thus exploring the implications of delivery-versus payment security settlements with cross-chain atomic swaps. Assistant governor of ARB Michele Bullock said:

 “With this project we are aiming to explore the implications of a CBDC for efficiency, risk management and innovation in wholesale financial market transactions. While the case for the use of a CBDC in these markets remains an open question, we are pleased to be collaborating with industry partners to explore if there is a future role for a wholesale CBDC in the Australian payments system.”

The move is a part of the ongoing debate for the Bank when it comes to CBDC policies. The head of payments policy at the RBA said that the bank will continue to research CBDCs despite the financial institution stating that there was not a strong police case to issue a CBDC back in September. As other alternatives to issuing a central bank digital currency, the bank pointed out the success of the country’s real-time New Payments Platform and stated they are willing to provide access to fiat banknotes for as long as the people of the country wish to keep using them. The central bank said that the project will be finished by the end of the year and will also issue a report in 2021 on it.

As reported previously, People living in the “land down under” can now use their Bitcoin to pay for things at Australian post offices as part of a new local BTC exchange partnership. A new announcement on June 24 shows that customers of the local cryptocurrency exchange Bitcoin.com.au will be able to pay for BTC at more than 3,500 post offices around the country.