Lucas Dobbins

Australia risks becoming a user of offshore digital finance infrastructure rather than a builder of its own unless local operators move quickly to develop regulated, institutional-grade market systems, BTC Markets CEO Lucas Dobbins has cautioned.

Speaking at the recent DECA Conference in Sydney, which brought together digital asset industry leaders, policymakers, regulators, investors, infrastructure providers and technology builders, Dobbins said Australia now has the regulatory signals and technical blueprint needed to modernise its financial market infrastructure.

The question, he said, is whether that infrastructure is built under Australian law, supervised by Australian regulators and operated by Australian market participants – or imported later from offshore.

“Australia has modelled what next-generation market infrastructure could look like,” Dobbins said. “Regulators have made clear that innovation sits within their remit. The question now is who builds it, where it is built, and under whose rules it operates.”

Project Acacia moves the debate from theory to execution

BTC Markets said the Reserve Bank of Australia and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre’s Project Acacia has materially shifted the debate on digital finance infrastructure.

The project tested wholesale digital asset use cases, including tokenised assets, stablecoins and a pilot central bank digital currency, showing how these systems could operate together in a regulated environment.

Dobbins said Project Acacia reinforced that the challenge for Australia is no longer whether the technology works, but whether the market can coordinate quickly enough to build institutional-grade infrastructure locally.

“Project Acacia has shown that tokenised assets, digital money and regulated market infrastructure can work together,” he said. “That moves the conversation from proof of concept to implementation.”

“This is not a technology question anymore. It is an execution question.”

Sovereign capability is now a financial infrastructure issue 

BTC Markets said sovereign digital finance infrastructure is critical to Australia’s long-term competitiveness, market resilience and regulatory oversight.

Without locally built infrastructure, Australia risks relying on offshore platforms for the next generation of market activity, raising questions about oversight, resilience, investor protection and the long-term development of Australia’s financial services sector.

Building this capability domestically would help Australia:

• maintain regulatory oversight of critical market systems
• support local market participants and institutional adoption
• attract global capital into Australian-regulated platforms
• and strengthen financial system resilience and competitiveness.

The company said recent global developments show why jurisdictional control over critical infrastructure matters. Access to advanced technologies, payments systems and financial networks is increasingly shaped by national policy settings, geopolitical priorities and regulatory permissions.

Operators needed to move from blueprint to reality

Dobbins said Australia already has many of the foundations in place, including a sophisticated financial sector, strong regulators and a clear opportunity to build digital asset infrastructure within the regulatory perimeter.

“Other markets are moving from pilots to implementation,” he said. “Capital, talent and liquidity will follow the jurisdictions where trusted infrastructure is live.”

BTC Markets has operated digital asset infrastructure in Australia for more than a decade and has notified ASIC of its intention to apply for an Australian Market Licence.

Dobbins said the next phase of Australia’s digital asset market will not be defined by speculation, but by regulated infrastructure, institutional participation and market-grade accountability.

“This is not about any single institution,” he said. “It is about whether Australia builds the rails for the next phase of financial markets here or waits to connect to someone else’s system later.”

The post Australia faces an institutional infrastructure choice: build it here, or import it later appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Lucas Dobbins

The passage of the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 is a significant moment, not just for Australia’s digital asset industry, but for the broader project of building a financial system fit for the decade ahead.

This has been a long time coming. Years of submissions, working groups, and sustained engagement with government and regulators have brought us here. I want to take a moment to recognise Caroline Bowler, BTC Markets’ former CEO and now Non-Executive Director. Her sustained work with Treasury, regulators, and industry participants over many years played a meaningful role in getting this bill over the line. Today is, in part, a reflection of that commitment.

For the first time, digital asset platforms operate within a dedicated legislative framework with clear expectations around licensing, consumer protection, and platform standards. That clarity matters, for businesses like BTC Markets, and for the institutional and retail investors who have been watching Australia’s regulatory posture closely.

But this is stage one cleared, not the finish line. What gets built on this foundation depends on how the regime is implemented in practice: the licensing pathways ASIC establishes, the transitional arrangements for existing platforms, and the pragmatism applied to real-world business models.

The timing is also worth noting. A week after the RBA’s Project Acacia findings pointed clearly toward a tokenised financial system, this bill provides the structural underpinning that makes that future achievable. Regulation and innovation are moving in alignment and that alignment is what unlocks institutional confidence at scale.

BTC Markets has been building toward this. Our markets licence application and ongoing engagement with ASIC and Treasury are deliberate investments in being a regulated, trusted participant in this market. The industry has earned its seat at the table. We intend to use it.

Australia has done this before, superannuation, the New Payments Platform, polymer banknotes. This framework can be the next chapter. The legislation has passed. The work now begins.

By Lucas Dobbins, CEO

The post BTC Markets says new digital assets law lays foundations for institutional confidence appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Lucas Dobbins

Crypto was the proof of concept. Tokenisation is the use case.

Over the past decade, blockchain technology has demonstrated something remarkable. Digital assets can be transferred securely, transparently, and instantly, without intermediaries. Bitcoin and Ethereum proved the underlying technology works at scale.Now the world’s most conservative financial institutions are applying that same technology to traditional assets. BlackRock has launched BUIDL[1], a tokenised treasury fund that has grown to US$1.7 billion in 2 years. J.P. Morgan processes over US$2 billion daily through its tokenised platform[2]. Seven central banks and 43 financial institutions are prototyping tokenised payments through the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) Project Agora[3]. The New York Stock Exchange has announced plans for 24/7 trading of tokenised securities with instant settlement[4].

This isn’t speculative. It’s infrastructure.

The evolution of ownership

To understand tokenisation, it helps to think about how ownership has changed over time.Owning shares used to mean holding a physical certificate. Ownership was tangible. But it was also slow and cumbersome to transfer.Dematerialisation changed that. Electronic records made trading faster, but something was lost. Your assets now sit in chains of custody, held by intermediaries, recorded in systems you can’t see or verify. You don’t hold anything directly anymore. You trust that the records are accurate.

Tokenisation is the next step: digital ownership that’s both fast and direct. A tokenised asset behaves like a digital stock certificate. You can own it, store it and transfer it, but with the transparency of a blockchain and the speed of the internet. No intermediary reconciliation.  No waiting.

What this means for you

Right now, the infrastructure behind your investments is slow, expensive, and opaque. Settling a trade takes days. Moving assets across borders can take weeks of paperwork and cost up to 5% in fees. And through all of it, you have limited visibility into where your assets sit.

Tokenisation changes the plumbing underneath. Settlement becomes instant. Cross-border transfers take minutes, not months. Costs drop as intermediaries are removed. Markets that close at 4pm can operate around the clock. And you get a clear, verifiable record of what you own. But here’s the thing as an investor, you won’t need to understand any of it. The technology will be invisible. What you’ll see are the outcomes: faster, cheaper, and more accessible.

Australia’s opportunity

Australia is well-positioned to embrace this transition.

We have strong regulatory frameworks that are respected globally, a deep superannuation sector actively seeking new asset classes, and a financial services industry with the capability to move quickly when the direction is clear. We’re not starting from scratch; we’re building on a system that works.

Plus, we have a structural advantage: we’re big enough to matter, but small enough to move fast. While larger jurisdictions navigate complex regulatory environments across multiple agencies and states, Australia can move with relative agility.

The question isn’t whether tokenisation will transform financial infrastructure, the world’s largest institutions have already answered that. The question is whether Australia builds that infrastructure locally.

What we’re building

At BTC Markets, we’ve spent 13 years building Australia’s digital asset exchange. We’ve operated through every market cycle, served hundreds of thousands of customers, and built institutional-grade technology from the ground up.

Now we’re building the next chapter.

We have notified ASIC of our intention to apply for a markets licence to offer regulated spot cryptocurrencies and tokenised assets. This will be a significant process, and we’re committed to working with regulators and following their process to develop the right framework, not around them, but with them.

Our plan is to obtain licensing infrastructure that enables particular types of tokenised assets to be offered and available to the public. We see a world where tokenised equities, bonds, and real-world assets will trade alongside cryptocurrencies. Markets will operate continuously. Settlement will be instant.

The licence isn’t the goal. It’s the foundation that makes everything else possible: a venue where cryptocurrencies and tokenised real-world assets can trade with the same investor protections Australians expect, but with 24/7 access, faster settlement, and broader participation.

The road ahead

Every major technological shift follows a pattern. First, the technology is proven. Then institutions adopt it. Then it becomes invisible. That’s how innovation works.

We’re in the second stage now. The proof of concept is complete. The institutions are building. The infrastructure is being laid.

Australia has the regulatory foundations, the financial sophistication, and the opportunity to lead. The infrastructure just needs to be built.

That’s what we’re building. 

If you’re working in the financial services industry and thinking seriously about what this means for your business, I’d welcome the conversation.

By Lucas Dobbins, CEO, BTC Markets

The post Tokenisation: what it actually means for Australian investors appeared first on AdviserVoice.