Four money options tested across 20 wholesale use cases to evaluate finality, liquidity, and risk
The Reserve Bank of Australia and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre tested four settlement money options across 20 wholesale tokenized asset use cases, according to findings from Project Acacia. The trial evaluated which settlement forms enable institutional tokenized markets to function at scale.
The four candidates were RBA exchange settlement account balances, a pilot wholesale central bank digital currency, tokenized commercial bank deposits, and stablecoins. Each was assessed against use cases spanning issuance, servicing, trading, and settlement across fixed income, managed funds, repos, structured products, private markets, carbon credits, and trade payables.
Brad Jones, RBA Assistant Governor, said in March 2026 that “wholesale CBDC could be helpful, but it was far from essential for tokenized markets to get started.” The finding underscores a broader conclusion from Project Acacia: settlement form directly affects finality, liquidity, and counterparty risk in tokenized markets.
The RBA identified potential benefits from tokenized settlement infrastructure, including shorter settlement cycles, lower counterparty risk, better capital efficiency, automated servicing, and fewer operational errors. The trials operated under regulatory relief from ASIC, which treated the activity as constrained testing rather than broad commercial authorization.
Settlement infrastructure remains a central question in tokenization because money and assets must move together without undermining the singleness of money, according to work by the Bank for International Settlements and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures.
Stablecoin regulation in Australia remains in flux. ASIC granted relief in 2025 for distributors of an Australian stablecoin, but stablecoin issuance and distribution remain tied to a licensing perimeter still being clarified. The RBA and Treasury previously found no clear public-interest case for issuing a retail CBDC in Australia at that time.
Project Acacia’s focus on settlement forms reflects a shift in central bank thinking about tokenization. Rather than treating digital assets as a standalone innovation, the RBA and DFCRC framed the question as one of infrastructure: which settlement money enables the cash leg to move at the speed and finality of tokenized assets.
