RBA Tokenization Push: $24B Efficiency Gains, Stablecoins vs Deposit Tokens

Australia’s Reserve Bank (RBA) is moving from discussing tokenization to planning practical rollout. In a speech, Assistant Governor Brad Jones said “Project Acacia” shows the question is now “how,” not “if,” with an estimated $24B-a-year efficiency gain for Australia. RBA tested 20 tokenized use cases across wholesale finance, including government bonds, corporate bonds, repos (repos), and investment funds. It also trialed four forms of tokenized settlement “money”: wholesale CBDC, exchange settlement account balances, stablecoins, and bank deposit tokens. The RBA’s view is that stablecoins may fit smaller or early markets, while bank deposit tokens could be more suitable for larger, regulated activity because banks already follow prudential rules and can access central bank liquidity. On execution, the RBA plans a digital financial market infrastructure sandbox with staged testing to address structural barriers in wholesale finance (network effects, legal/regulatory uncertainty, and coordination failures). It will also review exchange settlement account access rules after pending payment licensing reforms pass parliament, and expand a Deposit Token Working Group to improve interoperability across banks. For crypto traders, RBA tokenization work strengthens the regulatory-and-infrastructure case for tokenized settlement rails—especially stablecoins and regulated “deposit-token” style instruments. Near-term market impact is likely limited and more dependent on how quickly policy and market infrastructure progress than on immediate token flows.