Australia’s RBA Sees Big Upside in Tokenization, Launches Digital Infrastructure Sandbox

The Reserve Bank of Australia has signaled that tokenization is moving from a speculative idea to a practical policy agenda, saying the debate is no longer about whether asset and money tokenization has a future in Australia, but how it should be implemented. In a speech in Sydney on 25 March 2026, Assistant Governor Brad Jones said the RBA’s Project Acacia had convinced policymakers that tokenized assets, when paired with better market infrastructure and payments upgrades, could improve efficiency, reduce risk, and support the wholesale markets more broadly.

The central bank also put a hard number on the potential upside. Jones said analysis published by the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre estimated that tokenization could deliver about AUD 24 billion a year in efficiency gains for the Australian economy, with the figure rising further if new markets and second-round effects are included. That estimate has helped move the discussion away from theory and toward implementation, with the RBA saying there is now enough evidence to intensify work on how those benefits could actually be realized in a stable and orderly way.

Project Acacia was designed to test exactly that. The initiative brought together banks, custodians, fintechs, market infrastructure operators, fund managers, stablecoin issuers, and technology providers to explore 20 different use cases across a range of assets, from government and corporate bonds to term deposits, investment funds, trade payables, and mining royalties. Settlement in the project used both private money and central bank money, including stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, wholesale CBDC, and exchange settlement account balances, giving the RBA a chance to see how different settlement models might work in practice.

Tokenization Gains Momentum

A key takeaway from the speech was that private money probably will not turn into a straight fight for dominance. Instead, Jones suggested that stablecoins and bank deposit tokens may end up serving different purposes, with stablecoins better suited to smaller, newer tokenized markets and bank deposit tokens likely finding a stronger role in larger, more established ones. He tied that view to the different trust and scaling characteristics of the two instruments, noting that bank deposit tokens can build on the existing prudential framework and central bank support already surrounding bank deposits.

The RBA’s stance on wholesale CBDC was more cautious, but still open. Jones said the industry viewed a wholesale central bank digital currency as potentially helpful, yet far from essential for tokenized markets to get started. He added that if tokenized markets eventually become systemically important, the case for a wholesale CBDC would strengthen from a financial stability perspective. For now, though, the message was that Australia does not need to wait for a wholesale CBDC before making meaningful progress on tokenized finance.

Rather than betting everything on one solution, the RBA is preparing a broader push. Jones said the central bank will work with other Council of Financial Regulators agencies, the DFCRC, and industry on a set of initiatives to support responsible innovation. A key part of that effort will be exploring a new digital financial market infrastructure sandbox, which would give policymakers and industry a controlled environment to test and scale tokenized money, assets, and infrastructure over a longer-term, stage-gated process. The RBA also wants to use the experience from Acacia to inform future work on settlement infrastructure and payments interoperability.

The speech suggests Australia is entering a phase where tokenization is being treated less like a futurist concept and more like a systems design problem. The RBA is not declaring the technology a finished answer, and it is clearly still wary of legal, technical, and coordination challenges. But the broad direction is unmistakable: tokenized markets are no longer being asked to prove they deserve a place in the financial system. The real question now is how quickly the country can build the rails to support them.