For years, digital assets in Australia have sat in the “interesting, but not yet” bucket for major institutions but industry leaders say that’s changing fast as it moves from exploration to implementation.
At the Digital Economy Council of Australia’s 2026 conference on 17 June, ‘The Infrastructure of Institutional Capital’ session highlighted how institutional adoption is now being driven by regulatory clarity and hard infrastructure, not speculation.
Introducing the panel, Katrina Sharman from Piper Alderman posed the question: who and which Australian institutions will be ready to lean in as the opportunity opens up globally?
She highlighted State Street’s 2025 Digital Assets Outlook, which revealed nearly 60 per cent of institutional investors plan to boost their digital asset allocations in the coming year. Additionally, more than half of the institutions surveyed expect their average exposure to digital assets to double within the next three years.
“We’re also seeing major institutions, JP Morgan, HSBC, BlackRock, and UBS move from pilots to live tokenised products and infrastructure, but that shift isn’t being driven by speculation, it’s being unlocked by regulatory clarity and infrastructure,” Sharman said.
Panellist Judy Goh from technology firm Integral said the Australian market is evolving from exploration to implementation. With the digital assets framework bill passing in April, the RBA’s work on tokenised money, and Project Acacia testing next‑gen rails, the country is quietly putting the building blocks in place for institutional-scale adoption.
“We can attribute that evolution in terms of digital assets adoption to regulatory clarity … the digital assets framework bill that was passed earlier this year, that definitely did help move the adoption of digital assets,” she said.
However, Goh believes the evolution is more attributed to the fact that operational risk is now more manageable than a few years ago.
“In terms of operational risk today, there are solutions and infrastructure around aggregating liquidity across multiple exchanges into a single executable book, there are solutions to help automate the whole risk management around that exposure to digital assets, and as well real-time settlement,” she said.
“I think having that infrastructure in place is really what helps to drive the adoption on the institutional side.”
A key blocker to institutional adoption, according to Goh, is internal governance within.
“Institutions that are looking to expose themselves to digital assets, if you look at the risk committee compliance teams within these financial institutions, a lot of times they treat digital assets as an edge case. While the infrastructure is there for adoption, while the technology is enabling the adoption – I think sometimes politics within large financial institutions does hold back the progress,” she said.
Post-FTX, institutions expect crypto standards above regulatory minimums – boards assume “we don’t trust you” as a starting point.
As Jack Deeb, from institutional staking provider Pier Two, put it, institutional expectations for service provision in crypto are already “above regulation.”
He said in a globally-competitive industry where anyone with an internet connection can participate, providers are being forced to meet a much higher bar on security, resilience and transparency just to get in the room.
Independent Reserve CEO Adrian Przelozny said as an industry, they have to be honest with themselves.
“For a long time we’ve operated in an unregulated environment, and there were things that went really wrong … So when institutions want to get into this whole area one more time, they’re going to be very, very careful… they’re going to expect that our standards will be probably higher than what they’d be expecting from other counterparties.”
For a long time, he said, the reputational risk of getting into the industry has been quite high.
“But, I think the evidence is now pretty clear that that reputational risk is beginning to reduce through regulation, through the industry being around for a longer period of time.”
As a result, people are beginning to get more comfortable with digital assets.
“There’s more infrastructure, there’s custody, there’s all the things that did not exist when we began; things are really beginning to change. It’s great that the legislation went through in April, and now we have the legislation, we need the implementation of that legislation.”
The ball is now in ASIC’s court, as the industry awaits the green light to operate in line with other financial product providers in Australia.
“We’re waiting on the regulatory guides from ASIC, we’re waiting to actually be able to apply for that AFSL next year .. I think we’re 100 per cent on the right track, but the journey is not quite over yet. There’s still more work to be done.”
Kraken’s Jonathan Miller said there is also more work to be done when it comes to education, adding that himself and other industry leaders are having conversations with large institutions all the time, but many of them still have an entry level understanding of some of the technical sides of what makes the digital asset economy.
“In particular blockchain, distributed ledger technology, and cryptocurrency work. Those nuances and the detail there are actually critical, because if you misunderstand them, then you misunderstand the risk, or you misunderstand the opportunity,” Miller said. “I think those invisible parts of the puzzle are now in place in a lot of jurisdictions, including here, and that’s really positive.”
According to State Street’s report, private equity and private fixed income are projected to be the initial asset classes to undergo tokenisation.
By 2030, over 50 per cent of respondents expect that 10 to 24 per cent of institutional investments will be executed through tokenised instruments and nearly 60 per cent of institutional investors plan to increase digital asset exposure, with allocations expected to double in coming years.
“Institutional adoption is clearly happening, but it’s measured, and it’s being driven by infrastructure and by regulatory clarity – it’s certainly not hype anymore,” Piper Alderman’s Sharman said.
“The capital is there, but scale is going to depend on whether regulation, market structure, governance, particularly the high bar that we talked about, and operational readiness, and possibly internal politics in some cases actually align.”
She concluded the panel highlighting that not all parts of the market are moving at the same speed.
“We can see some areas, like tokenisation, stablecoins, and staking already showing real utility, and in this space we never know what’s around the corner.
“I think there’s lots to be excited about.The opportunity is clear, including the $24 billion opportunity identified by the DFCRC, but who captures it is going to come down to execution, and certainly the attempt to which we can keep it here on shore.”
