March 24 (Reuters) – Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ.AX) said on Thursday it carried out an Australian dollar stablecoin payment, in a landmark transaction to become the first Australian lender to mint a digital asset linked to the country’s currency.
A stablecoin is a kind of digital asset that is devised to keep its value stable in relation to another asset, and are frequently used as a portal to other cryptocurrencies or to generate income in decentralised financial systems.
The pilot transaction allowed Victor Smorgon Group, the investment company of Melbourne’s billionaire Smorgon family, to send $30 million to a digital asset fund manager, Zerocap, within 10 minutes. This compares to several days using existing systems.
It allowed Victor Smorgon Group to avoid the costly conversion of Australian dollars into US dollars before buying a US-dollar stablecoin known as USD Coin (USDC), which Zerocap uses to access cryptocurrency markets for Victor Smorgon. It will now be able to use ANZ’s coin to buy crypto assets, like bitcoin or ethereum’s ETH, directly at lower cost.
ANZ expects demand for its Australian dollar stablecoin – which it calls A$DC (pronounced “A dollar DC”) – to soar as more investors look to buy digital versions of real-world assets and trade them on blockchain technology.