Reserve Bank of Australia steps up push to build a tokenization market… “Laying the groundwork for commercialization”

Australia has begun a full-scale overhaul of its institutional framework to build a tokenized-asset market.

According to Decrypt on the 26th (local time), the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said it will move to establish the legal and market infrastructure needed to commercialize tokenized assets.

Brad Jones, deputy governor of the RBA, stressed that “the introduction of tokenization into the financial system is an inevitable trend.”

The move is being pursued as a follow-up step after the conclusion of the central bank’s ‘Project Acacia’ research. The project was a research program that experimented with tokenized assets, tokenized money, and payment systems.

Australian authorities plan to build a long-term ‘digital market infrastructure sandbox’ beyond short-term pilots. Through this, they intend to test real-world commercialization conditions for tokenized assets and lay the foundation for institutionalization.

The RBA is also working with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) to jointly design a regulatory framework covering, among other things, the legal definition of tokenized assets, settlement structures, and platform licensing standards.

Changes are also under way on the legislative front. The Australian Parliament is pushing a regulatory proposal that would require financial services licenses for virtual-asset platforms and custody services.

The industry sees this policy shift as a key catalyst that could accelerate institutional investors’ entry into the market.

The RBA estimated that the adoption of tokenization could boost efficiency in wholesale financial markets and reduce risks, generating economic effects worth about $24 billion annually.