Reserve Bank of Australia reports on Wholesale CBDC Research Project 8 December 2021

The Reserve Bank of Australia, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Perpetual and ConsenSys, with input from King & Wood Mallesons, have published a report following their completion of a year-long research project (“Project Atom”) examining the potential use and implications of a wholesale form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The project explored various issues, including the extension of access to a CBDC to a broad range of wholesale market participants, the potential benefits of integrating CBDC with tokenised assets on DLT platforms and the viability of an enterprise-grade DLT platform for a wholesale CBDC.