On Thursday, ANZ became the first Australian bank to issue a stablecoin through a permissionless public blockchain transaction.

ANZ confirmed in a statement that it had delivered the stablecoin to the Victor Smorgon Group through Zerocap, a private digital asset wealth management firm.

But although ANZ was the first, experts predict it’s only a matter of time before more Australian banks follow other western markets with this kind of stablecoin offering.

Commenting on ANZ's pilot move, Dacxi CEO Ian Lowe welcomed the initiative, noting that "it will continue to drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency."

"We believe that the continued adoption of blockchain technology by mainstream institutions shows that tokenization (where assets like gold and silver are provided as digital investments on the blockchain) is also moving toward more widespread adoption, justifying our ongoing investments in the space," said Mr Lowe.

Kraken's managing director for Australia, Jonathan Miller, believes the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) should try to replicate similar openness in its retail CBDC or eAUD offering to the Australian market.

Late last year, the RBA confirmed it was considering issuing a digital currency, or eAUD.

“Digital wallets are replacing physical wallets and this trend is likely to continue. It is also likely that these digital wallets will contain more than just digital images of the cards that are in our physical wallets,” RBA Governor Philip Lowe said at the time.

Mr Miller characterized ANZ's move as both laudable and rational.

"This proves that these open source protocols are alternative networks for financial services that offer many advantages over traditional closed source rails." In particular, transparency, composability/programmability, and ultimately greater utility for individuals and businesses,” said Mr. Miller.

"Cryptocurrencies are open source and these features have created the conditions for greenfield innovation and will never be overtaken by legacy payment stacks with walled gardens," he continued.

On Thursday, ANZ confirmed it had minted A$30 million using an ANZ-built Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible smart contract deployed via the Fireblocks platform, allowing the Victor Smorgon Group to transfer funds to Zerocap within minutes.

"Stablecoins are a new way for customers to transact and in this case it was an efficient and direct way for Victor Smorgon Group to access Zerocap's digital asset exchange and move funds across a decentralized network," ANZ's head of banking services said Nigel Dobson.

"We are excited to continue to test our capabilities and explore how this use case can be applied to other industries and customers in the future."

Maja Garatsa Djurdjevic

Maya's career in journalism spans more than a decade in finance, business and politics. Already an experienced editor and reporter in all elements of the financial services sector, before joining Momentum Media, Maya reported for several established news outlets in South East Europe, looking at key processes in post-conflict societies.