Chapter 2 · Introduction
Tokenisation is moving from experiment to infrastructure.
Stablecoin issuance has crossed a third of a trillion. Tokenised real-world assets are climbing. Central banks and exchanges are running serious pilots. Australia's wholesale markets sit in a system that hasn't been recomposed in a generation. Project Acacia asked what role digital money should play in rewriting it.
Global momentum
The numbers behind the moment.
US$320B+
Stablecoin issuance
May 2026, primarily USD non-bank issuers
US$30B+
Tokenised RWAs
>80% in private credit + US Treasuries
US$30T
Potential by mid-2030s
Some analyst forecasts of tokenised RWAs
US$368B/d
Broadridge DLR repo volume
April 2026 average daily volume
Where the activity is
Fixed income is the centre of gravity.
- Public-sector issuances — Hong Kong digital green bonds, EIB €100M, Slovenia €30M, World Bank/SNB CHF200M.
- Private-sector — Siemens €300M; KfW across Clearstream D7 and SIX; JPM tokenised commercial paper on Solana settling in USDC.
- Tokenised MMFs — ~US$15B across 66 products, 62k+ investors. BlackRock BUIDL ~$2.4B; Franklin Templeton BENJI ~$2.2B.
- Collateral mobility — Broadridge DLR averaged US$368B/day in repo volume in April 2026.
Australia
A short local history.
2018
CBA Bond-i
World's first bond issued + managed throughout its lifecycle on DLT, with the World Bank.
2022
ANZ stablecoin
First A$DC stablecoin payment. An early commercial-bank test of tokenised money.
2022–23
CBDC Pilot
RBA + DFCRC's first CBDC Pilot Project, with early retail and wholesale use cases on a central platform.
2024–26
Project Acacia
Twenty industry-led use cases. The pilot wCBDC was issued onto third-party DLT platforms for the first time.