Australia’s Digital Finance Crossroads: Build It Here or Buy It Later

Australia should prioritise building its own regulated digital finance infrastructure or risk depending on overseas platforms in the future, according to BTC Markets CEO Lucas Dobbins. He said the country has reached a pivotal stage where decisions made now will determine who controls the next generation of financial market infrastructure.

Addressing delegates at the DECA Conference in Sydney, Dobbins said Australia has already established the regulatory signals and technical blueprint needed to upgrade its financial markets. The remaining challenge, he argued, is ensuring those systems are created, supervised and operated within Australia’s own regulatory framework rather than imported later from offshore.

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Project Acacia Shifts the Focus

He highlighted Project Acacia as a turning point for the sector after it successfully tested wholesale digital asset applications involving tokenised assets, stablecoins and a pilot central bank digital currency in a regulated setting. Dobbins said the project demonstrated these technologies can work together, shifting attention from proof of concept to practical implementation.

Dobbins said the industry’s focus should now be on execution rather than technology, warning that jurisdictions already advancing from pilot programmes to live infrastructure are better positioned to attract investment, skilled workers and liquidity.

BTC Markets argued that developing sovereign digital finance infrastructure would improve Australia’s long-term competitiveness, financial resilience and regulatory oversight. The company also said growing geopolitical influence over payment systems and digital finance networks reinforces the need for Australia to retain control of critical financial infrastructure as institutional participation expands.

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