Key Insights:
- Australia’s Project Acacia is entering a testing phase to look into the real-world benefits of digital assets.
- These assets include CBDCs, stablecoins and tokenized assets and will pilot 24 use cases, including 19 real-money trials.
- Major Australian banks, including Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, and Westpac, are actively participating in collaboration with partners like JPMorgan.
Australia is stepping deeper into the digital finance space according to recent reports.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has officially announced the next stage of Project Acacia. For context, Project Acacia is an initiative from the Australian Government, aimed at testing the real-world benefits of CBDCs, stablecoins and tokenized assets.
This move is a big one for Australia, in terms of its efforts to modernize its financial system and adopt blockchain-based technologies. Here are the details.
What Is Project Acacia?
This project was launched in November of last year, and is a combined effort between the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC). The main goal of this effort is to investigate how digital forms of money can improve the functionality of Australia’s financial markets.
$RBNT has been selected for the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Project Acacia pilot
This marks the first time a public blockchain will be used in an official pilot by the RBA
The project will demonstrate how tokenized construction invoices can improve cash flow for builders and… pic.twitter.com/xLoFQKKBtc
— ＤＲＥＡＤ ＢＯＮＧＯ (@DreadBong0) July 10, 2025
As expected, this includes assets like stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits and wholesale CBDCs. After spending time in an initial research phase, the project is now entering a six-month testing phase.
During this time, 24 use cases will be piloted including 19 real-money trials and five simulations. Finally, the results of these tests are expected to be published in the first quarter of 2026.
What Will Be Tested?
The new pilot phase will look into several classes of digital assets. These include Fixed income securities, private markets, trade receivables, carbon credits, repo market transactions and new models for exchange settlement accounts at the RBA.
These trials are aimed at testing how assets like wholesale CBDCs, stablecoins and bank deposit tokens can be used. Officials expect that digital money will prove to be a better way to unlock faster settlements, reduce counterparty risk and increase liquidity across the board.
Major Banks and Global Partners Join In
Three of Australia’s four major banks including Commonwealth Bank (CBA), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and Westpac. These are all active participants in this project.
The CBA will work alongside JPMorgan to investigate how digital assets and tokenized collateral records could bring better efficiency and lower risk to Australia’s repo market. Project Acacia is not a standalone effort. Instead, it is part of a wider push by the Australian government to include crypto assets into the national systems.
In March of this year, the government under the center-left Labor Party announced plans to create a new regulatory framework for crypto. This framework would bring crypto exchanges under the umbrella of Australia’s existing financial services laws.
In addition, the government has promised to collaborate with the country’s top banks to investigate and address the issue of de-banking. For context, de-banking refers to a trend in which mainstream institutions restrict access for crypto-related businesses.
Since August of 2022, Australian officials have been holding industry consultations to develop this framework. As a result, Project Acacia has quickly become one of its most important pilot programs.
So Why Does This Matter?
The tests being run under Project Acacia are more than technical experiments. They’re strategic and if successful, they could completely change how financial institutions settle trades.
The way they manage collateral and interact with the RBA are also expected to change massively. In all, with trials set to last six months, the crypto and financial sectors will be watching closely.
By early 2026, the RBA and its partners will release a detailed report on the outcomes of this phase. These findings will affect the future of CBDCs in Australia and how tokenized asset markets are approached elsewhere around the world.
The post Australia Is Actively Testing CBDCs And Stablecoins As Part of “Project Acacia” appeared first on Live Bitcoin News.