Stacy Pereira
On Thursday, Australia’s top bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), launched Project Acacia, a six-month pilot project to explore wholesale tokenized asset markets. The RBA has found 24 distinct use cases to tap a central bank digital currency (CBDC) with participation from major banks and fintechs.
Under Phase 2, three of Australia’s “Big Four”—Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, and Westpac—alongside other players like CBA–JPMorgan, Northern Trust, who will test real-money uses for stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits, and a pilot wholesale CBDC. Their experiments span asset types such as fixed income, trade receivables, private markets, carbon credits, and innovative take-ups of the RBA’s Exchange Settlement Accounts.
Nineteen of these use cases will involve actual financial transactions, while five are proof-of-concept simulations. All will be conducted on distributed ledger platforms, including Hedera, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect, and other EVM-compatible networks, over the next six months. Trial insights are expected to be released in early 2026, a Reuters report suggested.
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Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has granted regulatory relief to facilitate real-world testing of digital dollar operations, allowing participants to evaluate efficiency, transparency, collateral management, settlement speeds, and broader market resilience directly.
This initiative represents the most comprehensive trial of wholesale digital currency to date in Australia. The outcomes promise to be pivotal in shaping future regulatory frameworks, technological adoption, and potential rollout strategies that could be implemented soon.
