The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced regulatory relief to support industry participation in Project Acacia, a joint Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) research initiative testing how digital money and existing settlement infrastructure could underpin Australian wholesale tokenised asset markets. The release also confirms that 24 use cases have been conditionally selected for the next stage of the project. The selected work comprises 19 pilot use cases involving real money and real asset transactions and five proof-of-concept use cases using simulated transactions, spanning asset classes including fixed income, private markets, trade receivables and carbon credits. Settlement assets proposed across the tests include stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, a pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and new ways of using banks’ existing exchange settlement accounts at the RBA, with pilot wholesale CBDC to be issued for testing on private and public-permissioned distributed ledger technology platforms including Hedera, Redbelly Network, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect and other EVM-compatible networks. ASIC’s relief is intended to streamline responsible testing of tokenised asset transactions, in some cases using CBDC, between participants and a limited number of financial institutions, with the instrument published on the Federal Register of Legislation. Testing is scheduled to run over the next six months, with a report on findings expected in the first quarter of 2026.
Australian Securities & Investments Commission 2025-07-10
Australian Securities & Investments Commission grants regulatory relief for Project Acacia tokenised asset settlement testing as the Reserve Bank of Australia and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre select 24 use cases
ASIC has granted regulatory relief for Project Acacia, a collaboration with the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre. The project examines integrating digital money with existing settlement infrastructure in Australian wholesale tokenised asset markets. Twenty-four use cases have been selected, including 19 pilot cases with real transactions and five proof-of-concept cases with simulated transactions, covering asset classes like fixed income and carbon credits. Testing involves stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, and a pilot wholesale CBDC on various distributed ledger platforms. Findings are expected in early 2026.