Australian Consortium Explores Tokenizing Money Markets & Debt

Last year, as part of Australia’s central bank digital cy (CBDC) pilots, one of the tests involved using the CBDC for settlement of money market transactions for certificates of deposit.

The trial was run by Imperium Markets and included Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank. It wanted to explore reducing risks in tokenized money markets and debt capital markets. Now Imperium Markets is extending that work through a partnership with the DFCRC, which ran the Australian CBDC pilots along with the central bank.

Australian money market and debt capital markets process trillions of dollars annually. However, many transactions still involve manual processes, which introduces risks.

Apart from digitizing the process, the trial will test delivery versus payment, enabling the simultaneous passing of title and cash, thereby reducing settlement risk. Imperium knows the benefits. It’s more a matter of enabling banks and investors to try out the benefits of the ASIC-licensed digital marketplace.

“Blockchain and distributed ledger technology is really about the simplification of markets,” said Imperium Markets Chair Rod Lewis.

“The current processes are slow and complicated — reliant on outdated technology, phone calls, emails, manual ticketing and spreadsheets.”

“The project aims to demonstrate that tokenisation on distributed ledger technology can democratise access for all participants, connect capital and deliver real-time data so that the markets can reach their full potential.” Imperium Markets uses R3’s enterprise blockchain.