The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) plans to conduct a pilot project for the central bank digital currency “eAUD”. It is exploring CBDC use cases in Australia with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC). This collaboration launched a project to test a general-purpose pilot CBDC.
The RBA in its newly released white paper states that the key objectives of the project are to identify and understand innovative business models, use cases, benefits, risks, and operational models for a CBDC in Australia. The central bank will see the issuance of eAUD, and the DFCRC will look into the development and installation of the eAUD platform. The white paper recommends the use of Ether for private, permissioned instances. The RBA highlighted that pilot participants, if selected, will have to bear their own costs for the conception, design, development, implementation, and piloting of use cases.
Australia’s ministerial department of Treasury, earlier this month, asked the general public for its opinion on taxing cryptocurrencies. Stephen Jones, the Assistant Treasurer, said their intention is to exclude crypto assets from being taxed as a foreign currency. Australian investors had 25 days to share their opinion which expires on September 30. If passed into law, the legislation will amend the existing definition of digital currency in the Goods and Sevices Tax (GST) Act to exclude it as a foreign asset.
