Sections 02–03
Australia: regulation, rails and inbound capital
A licensed product framework, a central-bank-proven settlement layer, and tens of billions per quarter of inbound institutional capital already arriving — against a FIRB regime that screens essentially every sovereign acquisition.
A$5,116.3b
Stock of foreign investment in Australia
ABS, 31 December 2025
$8.9b
Saudi Arabia FDI, Oct–Dec 2024 quarter
Australia's #2 source, up from $0.1b
A$163b
Renewable energy project pipeline
Five-year estimate
A$200b
Total Australian private credit
About half in real estate
Regulation
The Digital Assets Framework
The Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 progressed from exposure draft (25 Sept 2025) to introduction (26 Nov 2025), Senate passage (1 April 2026) and Royal Assent (8 April 2026). It creates two new financial products under the Corporations Act — Digital Asset Platforms (DAPs) and Tokenised Custody Platforms (TCPs) — both requiring an AFSL and subject to custody standards, settlement requirements, disclosure and dispute-resolution obligations, with ASIC as primary supervisor.
Transition runs ~18 months (12 months to commencement plus 6 months to apply). Existing operators dealing in financial products must lodge a complete AFSL application by 30 June 2026 to retain no-action protection. ASIC INFO 225 is under review; the reforms confirm public permissionless networks are not themselves financial products, and Instrument 2025/631 grants class relief to intermediaries distributing licensed-issuer stablecoins.
AUSTRAC / AML
Baseline obligations
- DCE registration is the baseline; renewal every three years.
- The Travel Rule takes effect 31 March 2026.
- Cross-border transfers require IFTI reporting within 10 business days.
- TTRs apply to cash transactions over $10,000.
Project Acacia
RBA + DFCRC, final report 19 May 2026
Twenty use cases — 12 live pilots with real money and assets, 8 proofs-of-concept — ran from August 2025 to February 2026 across fixed income, managed funds, repos, structured products, private markets, carbon credits and trade payables. It achieved a world first: issuing a pilot wholesale CBDC onto both public and private DLT.
Settlement used ESA balances, pilot wCBDC, tokenised bank deposits and stablecoins (AUDD, AUDM, AUDF, RLUSD) across five platforms — Hedera public and HashSphere, Canvas Connect, Redbelly and R3 Corda. The next phase is a structured regulatory sandbox taking industry from experimentation to commercialisation.
Headline estimate
A$24b
Annual gain from full-scale tokenisation — but DFCRC notes only ~A$1 billion would be realised by 2030 on the current trajectory.
Existing players
Who is already on the field
| Player | What they are | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| DigitalX (ASX: DCC) | Australia's only ASX-listed crypto fund manager | Wound up its RWAx fund in Feb 2025 after failing to attract investment beyond its own A$1m commitment. Demand must precede launch. |
| Redbelly Network | Formally verified blockchain (Univ. of Sydney + CSIRO) | KYC/AML for all participants; first public chain to host a wholesale CBDC; ~A$1.59b on-chain assets (Jan 2026); acquired Liquidise. |
| Liquidise | Sydney unlisted-equity tokenisation and registry | Registry services for unlisted securities worth over A$1 billion. Now owned by Redbelly. |
| Canvas / Canvas Connect | Privacy-focused institutional ZK Layer-2 | Executed Australia's first live repo using a tokenised AGB and live wholesale CBDC in Acacia. |
| Zerocap | Melbourne institutional trading, liquidity, custody | Fireblocks founding partner; Lloyd's-insured MPC custody; delivered ANZ's A$DC transaction for Victor Smorgon Group. |
| JellyC | Digital asset manager | Partnered with Liquidise and Redbelly on a tokenised fund. |
| Big 4 banks | ANZ A$DC, NAB AUDN, CBA, Westpac | ANZ's first live A$DC payment March 2022; NAB's AUDN world-first intra-bank cross-border stablecoin transaction on a public L1. All Acacia participants. |
| BrickX | Fractional residential property (trust-based) | Bricks from ~A$50 — proof of retail appetite for fractionalisation, with limited liquidity. |
Capital base
Superannuation and the investable asset stack
Superannuation
A$4.4 trillion, with headroom
Asset base
What can be tokenised
FIRB
Foreign investment: the hard constraint
- Substantial interest is 20%+ (subject to monetary threshold); direct interest is 10%+ for national-security businesses, land and media, at any value.
- 2026 thresholds: non-FTA A$347m; FTA A$1.498bn; sensitive/agribusiness A$73m; residential A$0; foreign government investors A$0.
- A new mandatory merger regime commenced 1 January 2026.
- Foreign persons are banned from buying established dwellings 1 April 2025 – 30 June 2029.
- Key friction: sovereign wealth funds face a $0 threshold, so essentially all SWF acquisitions are screened. Tokenising ownership does not remove this and can complicate beneficial-ownership tracing.
| Source | Oct–Dec 2024 FDI |
|---|---|
| United States | $14.2 billion |
| Saudi Arabia | $8.9 billion (from $0.1b prior quarter) |
| Canada | $5.7 billion |
| Singapore | $4.0 billion |
| UAE | $1.8 billion |
Finance and insurance overtook commercial real estate as the leading sector. Singapore and Canada injected ~US$4.1 billion into Australian office towers in 2025, attracted by a AAA sovereign rating and tax-efficient trust structures. GCC sovereign wealth funds manage ~US$5 trillion, projected to ~US$7.6 trillion by 2030.