ChainCatcher news, according to Coindesk, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) issued a strategic statement announcing that it will prioritize the research and development of wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDC), while suspending the retail version of CBDC plans. Brad Jones, RBA assistant governor for financial systems, pointed out in a statement that wholesale CBDC exhibits more significant potential benefits and faces relatively few challenges compared to the retail version.
Jones emphasized in his subsequent policy speech: "Our first priority is to work with the industry to launch wholesale CBDC and commercial bank deposit tokenization projects. The research will focus on cutting-edge concepts such as new distributed ledger technology, 'programmability' and 'atomic settlement', and assess their potential impact on Australia's financial system and macroeconomy."
According to the latest research report released by the RBA, it has not yet been found that retail CBDC can bring clear benefits to the public, mainly because Australia's existing retail payment system can already meet the needs of citizens well. However, the RBA and the Ministry of Finance stated that with the accumulation of international experience and the deepening of domestic research, this assessment may be adjusted over time.
To this end, the RBA and the Treasury plan to launch a broad public consultation on retail CBDC in 2025 and continue in-depth research and empirical experiments in the coming years. The two departments promise to jointly publish a comprehensive report in 2027 to systematically explore the potential advantages of retail CBDC and the specific forms it may take.
