The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is moving closer toward the launch of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), starting with an announced pilot program designed to explore potential use cases.

Australia’s program is a collaborative effort with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) and boasts a large number of partner participants from banks to securities markets.

Since its first announcement in September 2022, the project has received a large number of use case submissions, with 14 being decided on to start with — including partnerships with private fintech startups to large institutional players like Mastercard.

These include the use of offline payment solutions, tokenized foreign exchange assets, corporate bond settlement, livestock auctions, construction payments, tax automation, and more. RBA’s pilot of the CBDC is set to commence in the coming months, with a report to be expected towards the back end of Q2 or early Q3.

Brad Jones, Assistant Governor of financial systems at the RBA, said that the pilot project will contribute to hands-on learning by industry and add to policymakers’ understanding of how a CBDC could potentially benefit the Australian financial system and economy. Jones also noted that the use case providers that have been invited to participate in the pilot span a wide range of entities in the Australian financial system.

“The variety of use cases proposed covers a range of problems that could potentially be addressed by CBDC, including some that involve the use of CBDC for automatic settlement of transactions in tokenized assets,” explained Dilip Rao, the program director at DFCRC, adding that “the process of validating use cases with industry participants and regulators will inform further research into design considerations for a CBDC that could potentially play a role in a tokenized economy.”

In contrast, while the U.S. is also exploring the use of CBDCs, there are those like Congressman Tom Emmer who believe the currently proposed systems cost Americans far too much financial privacy and would be a “surveillance-style digital dollar.”

The Biden admin wants to create a surveillance-style digital dollar that is NOT:

❌Open
❌Permissionless
❌Private

That’s why I introduced legislation to prevent unelected bureaucrats from stripping Americans of their right to financial privacy. pic.twitter.com/55e2nfmlJy

— Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip) February 28, 2023

While still a believer in a digital future and economy, Emmer says the U.S. can not afford to “get this wrong.” At the time of writing Emmer and his colleagues have just introduced a “CBDC Anti Surveillance State Act” in hopes to help mitigate the creation of a token that is not open, permissionless, or private — as he and a majority of crypto natives see those principles as nonnegotiable, party affiliation aside.

In other news, BlueSky rolls out its decentralized social media app as an invite only beta.