The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has announced a project to investigate the potential uses for a federally backed digital currency.
According to Xinhua, the RBA announced a year-long, limited-scale trial of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in collaboration with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC).
“The Bank and the DFCRC will select a range of different use cases to participate in the pilot, based on their potential to provide insights into the possible benefits of a CBDC,” said the RBA.
According to Andreas Furche, CEO of the DFCRC, the technology for a digital currency already existed, and the project was focused on determining how a CBDC could benefit Australia.
“The key research questions now are what economic benefits a CBDC might enable and how it might be designed to maximise those benefits,” he says.
Unlike traditional digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, a CBDC would be government-stabilized and regulated.
