ANZ has become the first bank in Australia to execute a stablecoin transaction through a public permissionless blockchain platform.
ANZ delivered the stablecoin for Victor Smorgon Group, a private wealth management firm who wanted to put $30 million into the crypto markets via their digital asset fund manager Zero Cap.
ANZ minted 30 million of A$DC using an ANZ built Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible smart contract deployed through the Fireblocks platform. The coins were transferred between the parties and later redeemed back into Fiat currency.
ANZ banking services lead Nigel Dobson says: “An ANZ issued Australian dollar stablecoin is a first and important step in enabling our customers to find a safe and secure gateway to the digital economy. We’re excited to continue to trial our capability and explore how this use case can be applied in other industries and customers in the future.”
ANZ worked with Fireblocks, Chainalysis and OpenZeppelin to create the in-house purpose-built stablecoin smart contract.
Rather than incurring high fees for swapping $30 million Australian dollars for USDC, ANZ tapped Fireblocks' tokenisation engine to mint the $30 million as its own stablecoin
Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov says: "The financial sector is undergoing rapid transformation and we are enabling institutions with end-to-end technology for plugging into tokenisation, DeFi, staking and crypto trading. By being the first bank to mint a stablecoin, ANZ has established itself as a leader when it comes to innovation and we look forward to welcoming other institutions who are on the same path.”
ANZ has a track-record adopting blockchain solutions and is a founding partner of Lygon, which uses blockchain technology to streamline bank guarantees.