Australia has passed a regulated framework for tokenised assets before the United States has, and the Reserve Bank's Project Acacia has already tested it on live use cases with the major banks.

About the guest

Alan Burt is Executive Chairman of Redbelly Network, the public blockchain infrastructure named in the Reserve Bank of Australia's Project Acacia, and Co-Founder and General Partner of Beachhead Venture Capital. He came up as a technologist and IT services founder, exited his cloud services business in 2013, and has spent the years since investing across B2B SaaS and, more recently, blockchain and tokenisation. He invests alongside Utiliti in a number of companies.

What this episode covers

• What tokenisation actually is, and why it is not the same thing as crypto speculation.

• The Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Act, which received Royal Assent on 8 April 2026, and the two new regulated categories it creates.

• Redbelly Network's role in Project Acacia, including settling a central bank obligation on a public blockchain for the first time anywhere.

• The liquidity unlock: research cited in the episode points to roughly $24 billion a year in savings, around 1 per cent of GDP.

• What it would take for an Australian fund manager to offer investors genuine liquidity options on assets that have never had them.

• Collateral mobility, the looping trade, and why borrowing against an asset can matter more than selling it.

• Founder liquidity, the secondary market problem, and the early-stage funding gap in Australian venture.

Why now

Australia has gone from policy ambiguity to a defined regime, while the equivalent United States legislation is still pending. The Act carries a transition runway before it commences, so the next 12 months are when fund managers, issuers and custodians decide how to use it. Capital markets have tightened, exit windows have narrowed, and a credible new route to liquidity changes the calculation for anyone holding illiquid assets.

Who this episode is for

• Fund managers and GPs weighing whether to tokenise an LP interest or offer secondary liquidity.

• Founders thinking about exit options beyond an IPO or trade sale.

• Investors and LPs who want optionality on long-dated commitments.

• Operators in financial technology building on the new regulatory clarity.

Subscribe for new episodes every two weeks.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/utiliti-group/