ANZ’s stablecoin A$Electricity has been utilized to purchase Australian tokenized carbon credits, marking decision concerning test from the asset’s use cases from our economy.
In March, the “Big Four” bank grew to become the very first major Australian lender to mint its very own stablecoin after overseeing an airplane pilot transaction worth $20.76 million, or $ 30 million Australian dollars (AUD), between Victor Smorgon Group and digital asset manager Zerocap.
ANZ’s stablecoin is fully collateralized by AUD locked in the bank’s managed reserved account. To date, A$Electricity transactions have mainly been conducted within the Ethereum blockchain.
According to some Monday report in the Australian Financial Review (AFR), the most recent transaction saw its lengthy-time institutional partner Victor Smorgon make use of aDollarElectricity to buy Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).
The carbon credits were tokenized and supplied by BetaCarbon, a blockchain-based carbon buying and selling platform that issues digital security assets dubbed BCAUs, which represent one kilogram of carbon offsets per credit.
The transaction also saw participation from Zerocap again, who provided market-making services and liquidity by exchanging the A$Electricity sent from Victor Smorgon into USD Gold coin (USDC) to ensure that BetaCarbon could accept the offer. The need for the transaction is not specified, however.
With regards to the bank’s outlook around the crypto/blockchain sector, ANZ’s banking services portfolio lead Nigel Dobson told the AFR the firm is searching at blockchain tech as a way of “pursuing the transition of monetary market infrastructure” and isn’t always thinking about speculative crypto assets themselves:
“We check this out is beginning to change from being internet-protocol based to 1 of ‘tokenized’ protocols. We believe the actual infrastructure — efficient, secure, public blockchains — will facilitate transactions, both ones we know today and brand new ones that’ll be more effective.”
Dobson echoed similar sentiments in the Chainalysis Links event in Sydney on June 21, noting that ANZ quickly “banned the term crypto immediately throughout our internal communications and narrative” if this began exploring blockchain tech a couple of years back.
He continued to include the bank has explored multiple use cases for blockchain tech, for example logistics tracking and supplying on-ramps via stablecoins for institutions to purchase digital assets. However, Dobson recommended that tokenized carbon credits were a vital area the bank continues to be preparing for:
“Another area where there exists a strong position when it comes to sustainability is how we’re feeling the tokenization of carbon credits and marketplaces driven by tokenized assets and tokenized value exchange is going to be really efficient.”
Related: BTC Markets becomes first Australian crypto firm to obtain a financial services license
At the beginning of this month, ANZ eliminated offering any crypto exposure to retail investors because of their insufficient financial literacy.
Maile Carnegie, a professional for retail banking, noted in the Australian Financial Review Banking Summit that “the majority of them don’t understand really fundamental financial well-being concepts.”
