MEDIA RELEASE
Wednesday 17 December 2025
Imperium Markets has issued the first ever tokenised corporate bond in Australia as part of Project Acacia’s wholesale tokenised asset and settlement research project.
In a use case led by Macropod, the bond was issued on Imperium’s ASIC-licenced marketplace and settled on Redbelly Network using Macropod stablecoin AUDM. It was purchased by Barrenjoey Markets Pty Ltd who then executed a secondary trade to JellyC, a digital asset management company.
The two transactions, which would currently take up to four days in total to be completed, took four minutes in total.
"Imperium is extremely proud to have issued the first tokenised corporate bond in Australia in our own licenced marketplace,” Imperium Chairman Rod Lewis said.
“To have an investor deal directly on a primary issuance and then sell it to another investor, and to have those transactions settle atomically with a stablecoin with zero settlement risk, is revolutionary for our markets. It also paid the coupons and maturity payment automatically.
“Investors being able to transact on securities with their peers is something the market has been demanding for years. This will have dramatic improvement on productivity and improved investment returns for all Australians.
"We are extremely grateful to Barrenjoey Markets Pty Ltd and JellyC for their involvement, and want to congratulate Macropod and Redbelly Network for their input.
“Wholesale financial markets can only be tokenised by collaborating in a marketplace and we commend those who participated.”
Macropod CEO Drew Bradford said: "Australia needs an active, thriving corporate bond market for national productivity and increased liquidity is key to that.
“We have proven that tokenising bonds and settling with AUDM stablecoin in Imperium's licenced marketplace is possible. Technology will change markets for the better, we need to make sure Australia is ready for what is an inevitable transition to tokenised markets."
Project Acacia is a joint initiative between the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre which is exploring the role of digital money in wholesale tokenised asset markets.
Redbelly Network CGO Tim Bass said: “We are pleased to see licensed marketplaces like Imperium Markets adopt end-to-end compliant tokenisation. It meaningfully improves capital formation, broadens distribution, and unlocks collateral mobility for issuers and investors.”
The bond was tokenised onto Redbelly Network, a KYC compliant capital markets blockchain and settled using the Macropod AUDM stablecoin. The use case was named CLIFFO Series 1 - an acronym for Corporate Loan Investment for Future Obligations.
MEDIA CONTACT: Billy Briggs | 0474 697 235 | [email protected]
