Australia's Treasury released its seventh Intergenerational Report on Sept. 21, mapping the country's economic and federal budget outlook through 2065-66. The report identifies artificial intelligence, geopolitical fragmentation, the energy transition, population aging and the shift toward a services economy as five major long-term transitions, but digital assets are absent from those headline themes.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers described the AI revolution as the biggest economic transformation of the current era. Treasury says agentic AI systems are becoming more autonomous, capable and widely used, while noting that productivity gains will not arrive automatically and will depend on investment, adoption, skills and regulation. The government expects Australia's economy to more than double in size by 2065-66, with real income per person projected to rise 55%.
Coinbase Australia country director John O'Loghlen criticized the omission, arguing future AI agents will need financial infrastructure for automated economic activity. He said stablecoins and tokenized markets could become part of the rails used by agentic finance. The Treasury's separate Financial Innovation Strategy, released Sept. 3, does address digital assets, stablecoins, tokenization, digital money and AI-enabled financial services. Australia has legislated a licensing framework for digital asset platforms and tokenized custody platforms, scheduled to begin on April 9, 2027, with payment stablecoins expected to be regulated as tokenized stored-value facilities.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has kept tokenized finance on its policy agenda. In May, the RBA and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre released final findings from Project Acacia, which tested 20 wholesale tokenized asset use cases across issuance, trading and settlement. DFCRC research estimates full digital finance adoption could generate A$24 billion in annual Australian economic gains. In September, the RBA opened a consultation on how its payment and settlement systems could support tokenized markets, with submissions due Oct. 30, 2026.
