The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is endorsing real-world asset (RWA) tokenization after Project Acacia’s analysis suggested tokenized finance and related infrastructure upgrades could contribute about A$24 billion (roughly US$16.7 billion) to the Australian economy each year. Assistant Governor Brad Jones described the findings as indicating tokenization could be “revolutionary,” and said the benefit could be larger if new markets develop. He added that the central question has shifted from whether tokenization will have a role in Australia’s financial system to how it will be implemented.
Project Acacia is a collaborative RBA research program run with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre and industry partners. Building on an earlier wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot, the project tested whether tokenized assets and upgraded infrastructure could improve the functioning of Australia’s wholesale financial markets.
Global consultancy McKinsey has projected tokenized assets might approach nearly US$2 trillion by 2030, and in November the head of Australia’s securities regulator, Joe Longo, urged the country to “seize the opportunity” or risk falling behind international peers.
A new digital finance sandbox to test DFMI
Using lessons from Project Acacia, the RBA plans to work with other agencies and industry to explore a digital financial market infrastructure (DFMI) sandbox. The proposed sandbox would provide a controlled, stage-gated environment to test and scale tokenized money, tokenized assets, and supporting infrastructure over time, and could be linked with a wholesale CBDC. Areas of particular interest include the interaction of a wholesale CBDC with bank deposit tokens and stablecoins, and the synchronization of tokenized asset ledgers with RITS (Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System).
Onchain RWA growth
Jones emphasized that modernizing payments, monetary and financial infrastructure for the digital era is a strategic RBA priority. Data from RWA.xyz show the onchain value of the RWA market (excluding stablecoins) recently reached a record US$27.5 billion, representing a 234% increase over the past 12 months despite the broader crypto downturn.
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