Australia approves 24 tokenised asset cases with $12B potential

Australia’s financial regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), has approved 24 tokenised asset use cases under Project Acacia, enabling real-money trials involving central bank digital currency (CBDC) and stablecoins.

Project Acacia is a collaboration between the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) aimed at exploring how digital forms of money can support institutional trading of tokenised assets.

Tokenised assets represent real-world assets like bonds, property, commodities, and carbon credits on blockchain technology, allowing fractional ownership and faster settlement.

The initiative includes major banks such as ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Westpac, alongside fintech firms including Fireblocks and Zerocap.

ASIC’s regulatory relief facilitates streamlined pilot operations that would otherwise face regulatory hurdles.

The 24 use cases cover diverse asset classes including fixed income, private markets, trade receivables, and carbon credits.

Nineteen pilots will involve real-money transactions, while five will use simulated transactions.

Settlement assets include stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, and pilot wholesale CBDC issued across distributed ledger platforms like Hedera, Redbelly Network, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect, and EVM-compatible networks.

Testing will last six months with results expected in early 2026.

“Governments worldwide are rushing to develop state-sanctioned blockchain solutions that offer none of the real innovation provided by Bitcoin, instead offering options mired in centralization and control.” Komodo Platform CTO Kadan Stadelmann criticised the project’s permissioned blockchain approach, stating.

“strips [blockchain] of the real innovations” and risks entrenching traditional financial systems with “even greater financial control than before.” he warned about Project Acacia’s permissioned model.

Stadelmann contrasted permissioned blockchains with permissionless ones like Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH), which offer greater transparency and censorship resistance.

At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $111,171.