The Reserve Bank of Australia has declared that asset and money tokenization could generate approximately AUD 24 billion in annual economic value, marking a decisive shift from exploring whether tokenization has a role in the country’s financial system to determining how it will be implemented.
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and DFCRC research.
RBA Assistant Governor Brad Jones delivered the estimate on March 25, 2026, in a speech titled “After Acacia: The Next Era of Financial System Innovation?” at the Australian Payments Plus “Beyond Tomorrow” Forum in Sydney. The AUD 24 billion figure comes from research by the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), with Jones noting that additional benefits could materialize if new markets emerge from tokenization infrastructure.
The figure represents a substantial upgrade from earlier RBA estimates. A 2023 speech pegged transaction cost savings alone at AUD 1 to 4 billion per year, with capital cost savings reaching up to AUD 13 billion annually. The DFCRC’s AUD 24 billion assessment captures a broader scope, including second-round economic effects.
Project Acacia: 20 Use Cases With Real Money Across Major Banks
The estimate emerged from Project Acacia, a joint RBA-DFCRC initiative launched in November 2024 that tested 20 to 24 use cases with real money and real asset transactions. Asset classes spanned government bonds, corporate bonds, repo agreements, investment funds, trade payables, and mining royalties.
Three of Australia’s four major banks participated: Commonwealth Bank (CBA), ANZ, and Westpac, alongside local fintech firms. Settlement assets tested included stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, and a pilot wholesale CBDC deployed across multiple blockchain platforms including Hedera and EVM-compatible networks.
Fixed-income markets showed the strongest industry interest during testing. This aligns with global trends in institutional tokenization, where trade finance and bond settlement have emerged as the highest-conviction use cases for on-chain infrastructure.
Jones framed the RBA’s position plainly: “We no longer see the main question as whether tokenisation has a future in Australia’s financial system, but rather, how.” He tempered expectations by adding that “tokenisation by itself is no silver bullet, but might instead be seen as one element of an enhanced payments and financial ecosystem that better serves the needs of the economy in the digital age.”
DeFi Protocol Impact: What Institutional Tokenization Means for On-Chain RWA Markets
The RBA’s endorsement is significant for the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization sector, which has grown from a niche DeFi narrative into one of the fastest-expanding protocol categories. The central bank is effectively validating the core infrastructure thesis behind protocols like Ondo Finance, Maple Finance, and Centrifuge, all of which facilitate on-chain issuance and settlement of traditional financial instruments.
The distinction matters for DeFi participants. The RBA’s framework centers on permissioned wholesale tokenization rails, using bank deposit tokens and a potential wholesale CBDC rather than permissionless stablecoins. This creates a two-track system: institutional-grade settlement through regulated channels, and open DeFi composability through permissionless protocols.
For tokenized government bond markets specifically, the RBA’s work parallels momentum from products like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and Franklin OnChain, which have demonstrated institutional appetite for on-chain sovereign debt exposure. Australia’s explicit quantification of AUD 24 billion in economic benefits gives RWA protocols a concrete institutional anchor to reference when pitching to APAC allocators.
The yield dynamics are also relevant. As institutional capital increasingly flows toward tokenized financial infrastructure, the arbitrage between tokenized treasury yields and DeFi lending rates narrows, pulling more traditional capital on-chain through familiar fixed-income instruments.
Australia’s Tokenization Roadmap: Regulatory Sandbox and Cross-Border Ambitions
The RBA identified three systemic barriers to tokenization adoption: lack of competitive tension from entrenched network effects, risk aversion driven by regulatory uncertainty, and coordination failures across market participants. The next phase of work targets all three.
Concrete next steps include launching a Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (DFMI) Sandbox for longer-term testing, reviewing Exchange Settlement Account (ESA) access policies to broaden participation beyond traditional banks, and forming a Regulator-Industry Tokenisation Advisory Group. The RBA also plans to expand its Deposit Token Working Group and pursue cross-border payments work with peer central banks.
ASIC provided regulatory relief for Project Acacia participants, signaling a coordinated approach across Australia’s Council of Financial Regulators. The ASX is separately piloting tokenized government bond settlement, adding another institutional rail.
Australia’s approach aligns with similar initiatives at the BIS (Project Agora for tokenized cross-border payments), the Bank of England, and Singapore’s Monetary Authority, which has already moved into live issuance of tokenized bonds under Project Guardian. Australia’s differentiation is the breadth of real-transaction testing, covering 20-plus use cases, and the explicit economic quantification.
For permissionless DeFi protocols seeking to capture Australian institutional flows, the compliance gap remains the key obstacle. Permissioned tokenization rails offer the regulatory certainty that institutions require, while permissionless protocols offer composability and global liquidity. Protocols that can bridge both, offering institutional-grade compliance wrappers on open infrastructure, are best positioned for APAC institutional demand.
The full Project Acacia final report is expected in late April 2026 and will likely shape formal policy recommendations. That report should provide a granular breakdown of the AUD 24 billion estimate and detail the methodology behind DFCRC’s economic modelling, giving market participants a clearer picture of which asset classes and settlement layers carry the most institutional conviction.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.
