ANZ bank completes Australian CBDC use case for carbon credit trading

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Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) has completed its use case in the pilot project run by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre using central bank digital currency (CBDC). ANZ partnered with Grollo Carbon Ventures (GCV) to trade carbon credits.

ANZ tokenized Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) and GCV used its A$DC stablecoin to trade carbon credits on a public, permissionless blockchain. Settlement occurred “in near real-time via ANZ smart contracts,” the bank said. Australian CBDC was used to back A$DC. ANZ banking services lead Nigel Dobson said:

“When applied to carbon markets, tokenisation has the potential to improve efficiency and transparency, reduce risk and preserve the unique characteristics of underlying projects to incentivise investment in climate solutions.”

This was the first of three Australian CBDC pilot use cases that ANZ will participate in. It will also be involved in use cases for offline payments and pension fund payments, which are among the 14 use case projects the RBA announced in March. Besides the three projects, ANZ will also be involved in distributing the CBDC.

Related: Putting carbon credits on blockchain won’t solve the problem alone: Davos

A$DC premiered in March 2022 as the first Australian dollar-based stablecoin issued. It was used in June in an ACCU trade between the Victor Smorgon group and Zerocap.

The second Australian bank-issued stablecoin was the AUDN, issued by National Australia Bank with carbon credit trading specifically in mind. That coin was used in the first-ever cross-border stablecoin transaction in March.

Pro-crypto Australian Senator Andrew Bragg introduced legislation to regulate stablecoin and cryptocurrency services as a private bill (one not introduced by a government minister) in March. He had released a draft of the bill in September. The RBA published a white paper on stablecoins and their regulation in December.

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