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Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Queensland's land titling system records who a lot has been transferred to. It does not say what a digital token described as part of a unit is. The document that comes closest to an official answer is federal and is not legislation at all: Information Sheet 225, published by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) under the title "Digital assets: Financial products and services".
The sheet does not create a special category for tokens. It asks an older question: is the thing being offered a financial product under the Corporations Act? If it is, the licensing and disclosure rules that apply to any financial product apply to it, whatever technology records it. This guide reads the current version of the sheet with one case in mind, a token said to represent a share of a rented unit in Queensland, and takes ASIC's tests one at a time. It then sets out which licences follow and where ASIC's transitional position stands in early August 2026.
Sources: ASIC, Information Sheet 225; ASIC news items of 4 May 2026 and 25 June 2026.
What Information Sheet 225 is
ASIC's website records the page that carries INFO 225 as created on 27 September 2017 and last modified on 30 April 2026. The substantial rewrite came on 29 October 2025, when ASIC announced in a media release that it had updated the sheet to clarify how existing law applies to digital assets, following a consultation paper, CP 381, issued in December 2024. The release said the guidance now addresses stablecoins, wrapped tokens, tokenised securities and digital asset wallets.
The sheet used to speak of "crypto-assets". It now uses "digital assets", and says it applies to a wide range of them however they are described: digital assets, crypto-assets, virtual assets, tokenised assets, tokens or coins. It expressly includes tokenised assets where the underlying asset is a financial product or some other asset. A token tied to real estate is inside its scope.
Related readOwning Queensland land in fractions: duty, land tax, capital gainsEvery conclusion in its examples is expressed as "likely" or "unlikely", because the answer in a real case depends on the terms, the marketing and how the product is used. The sheet is organised in parts. Part A covers digital assets that are, or are part of, a financial product, and holds the worked examples. Part B covers providing financial services in relation to those assets. Part C covers the obligations of licensees, and Part D covers digital asset exchanges as financial market infrastructure.
The running illustration: one rented unit, 1,000 tokens
The following case is illustrative. It describes no real offer, and its figures are chosen only to make the tests concrete.
A company buys a two-bedroom unit in an inner Brisbane suburb and is registered as its owner. It issues 1,000 tokens on a public blockchain and sells them to the public, describing each token as representing one thousandth of the unit. The company appoints a property manager, lets the unit, pays the body corporate levies, rates and repairs from the rent, and distributes what is left to token holders in proportion to their holdings. The tokens can be transferred from one holder to another. The company says it will sell the unit at a time of its choosing and distribute the net proceeds.
The broad test: a facility for making a financial investment
The widest of the tests in INFO 225 is the general definition of a financial product as a facility for making a financial investment, which the sheet takes from sections 763A and 763B of the Corporations Act. ASIC breaks it into three elements.
Related readHow to exit a shared Queensland house: withdrawal, resale, wind-upThe first is a contribution: the client gives money or money's worth to another person. The second is the generation of a return, and it is met in any of three ways: the other person uses the contribution to generate a financial return or other benefit for the client; the client intends that it will be so used; or the other person intends that it will be so used. ASIC notes that the second and third limbs are met even if no return is in fact produced. The third element is that the client has no day-to-day control over the use of the contribution.
The sheet adds interpretive notes. Money's worth is read broadly. The assessment looks at how the facility is commonly used by the people who acquire it. A return may come as a capital gain and need not be a cash payment. And a product does not stop being a financial product because the present holder bought it from someone other than the issuer.
Applied to the illustrative unit, each element can be read off the facts. Buyers pay for tokens. The company uses the money to buy a unit and let it, with the stated aim of paying rent and sale proceeds to holders. Holders do not choose the tenant or approve the repairs. The last interpretive note matters for a transferable token: on ASIC's reading, the analysis does not change merely because one of the 1,000 tokens was bought from an earlier holder a year later and not from the company.
Related readIf the operator fails: token holders and the Queensland land titleThe managed investment scheme test
A managed investment scheme is the category ASIC reaches for most often where money is pooled, and INFO 225 reduces the definition to three questions.
- ContributionDo people contribute money or money's worth to acquire rights to benefits produced by the scheme? The rights may be actual, prospective or contingent.
- PoolingAre contributions pooled, or used in a common enterprise, to produce financial benefits or rights or interests in property for holders?
- ControlDo contributors have day-to-day control of the operation? A right to vote or to give directions is not sufficient.
If the answer to the third question is no, after yes to the first two, the sheet says the arrangement is likely to be a managed investment scheme.
For the illustrative unit, the answers follow the facts already set out. A thousand tokens are sold for money; the money is pooled to buy one unit; the benefit is net rent and a share of the sale price; and the company, not the holders, runs the letting. If the company gave holders a vote on whether to sell, ASIC's note on the third question indicates that this would not by itself amount to day-to-day control.
The second question deserves a closer look, because it is where a property token can come out differently. ASIC's own contrast is drawn with gold. In one scenario, a token's issuer uses the sale money to buy gold and gold-related investments held in a trust, each token being an interest in the trust; ASIC considers that token likely to be an interest in a managed investment scheme, and observes that the possibility of capital gain is a financial benefit even where there is no cash flow. In the variation, each numbered token corresponds to a specific numbered parcel of gold held under a bailment and safekeeping arrangement, and holders have an interest only in the gold matching their own tokens; ASIC considers that token unlikely to be an interest in a scheme, because there does not appear to be pooling or an interest in a common enterprise, even though holders have paid money and lack day-to-day control.
Related readProperty tokenisation glossary: regulator terms and a Queensland lotA single rented unit shared among 1,000 holders is hard to fit into the second pattern. No holder has a separate, identified part of the unit that is theirs alone; the rent is one stream, collected by one manager and divided.
ASIC's own example of tokenised real estate
INFO 225 does not leave real estate to inference. One of its worked examples is headed "Tokenised real estate", and its facts are close to the illustration used here.
In ASIC's hypothetical, Company H runs a real estate business. One of its products is a fractionalised real estate investment in which each of a group of tokens represents a part interest in a particular apartment building. Under the product's white paper, investors' funds are used to buy the building, with Company H on the title as nominee for the investors as a group. Company H is responsible for leasing the apartments, and the profit after costs is held in an account for that building. The company may, but is not obliged to, buy back some of the tokens from retained profits from time to time. The value of the tokens is expected to rise and fall with the market value of the property and with any buy-backs.
ASIC's conclusion is that the token is likely to be an interest in a managed investment scheme. Its reasoning is brief: Company H uses the money raised from selling the tokens to buy the investment property and, together with the leasing income, to maintain and service it, and this is intended to generate financial benefits for the members, being the growth in the value of the tokens over time.
Related readCan a Queensland land title be put on a blockchain? What the Act saysTwo details are worth noting for a Queensland reader. ASIC's example identifies the benefit as growth in token value, with profits retained and used for discretionary buy-backs, so a token need not pay out rent to be caught. And the example places the company on title "as nominee". In the land register, the registered owner is the company; the holders' position rests on the arrangement with it.
The security test: shares and debentures
The third test asks whether the token is a security. INFO 225 describes a share as a collection of rights relating to a company, typically an ownership interest, voting rights in company decisions, an entitlement to share in future profits through dividends, and a claim on residual assets on winding up. It describes a debenture as a way for a business to raise money from investors under a promise to repay the money deposited or lent, usually with interest, at a future date, secured or unsecured.
ASIC's position is that where a token carries rights similar to those of a share or a debenture, it is a security. Its worked example is a tokenised bond: a service helps companies issue corporate bonds on a blockchain, the bonds keep the ordinary features of a promise to repay principal and pay interest, and ASIC considers them likely to be debentures and therefore securities.
The illustrative unit can be reshaped to meet this test. Suppose the company that owns the unit issued tokens that each carried a vote at company meetings, a right to dividends from the company's profit and a claim on what is left if the company is wound up. On ASIC's description those are the rights of a share, and the token would be assessed as one. Suppose instead that the company borrowed from token buyers to purchase the unit, promising to repay each token's price in five years with interest, secured or not against the property. That is the pattern ASIC describes as a debenture. In both variations the unit is the same Queensland lot, let to the same tenant; what has changed is the right the token carries.
Related readTokenised property in Queensland: what a token is and what it is notThe derivative test
The fourth test comes from section 761D. INFO 225 sets out three conditions. A party to the arrangement must, or may be required to, provide consideration of a particular kind to someone at a future time. That future time is at least the number of days after the arrangement is entered into that the regulations prescribe. And the amount of the consideration, or the value of the arrangement, is ultimately determined by, derived from or varies by reference to the value or amount of something else.
The sheet names tokens whose price refers to real-world assets, with gold and real estate as its instances, among the digital assets that can be derivatives. This test catches a different design from the one in the running illustration. Suppose an issuer owned no unit at all, and sold tokens under which it promised to pay holders, at a future date, an amount calculated from a valuation of a named Brisbane unit or from a published index of unit prices. Holders would have no interest in any property; they would have a claim on the issuer measured by a property's value. That is the structure the derivative definition describes. ASIC's own example of a traditional derivative is a contract that lets a client speculate on the price of an underlying asset without acquiring any interest in it.
The base illustration, where money is pooled to buy the unit itself, is addressed in INFO 225 under the scheme heading, as the Company H example shows. The sheet notes one consequence of the derivative label that matters to anyone designing such a product: each party to a derivative that is not issued on a financial market is taken to be an issuer of it.
The non-cash payment facility test
The last of the five tests concerns payment. Under section 763D, as INFO 225 puts it, a facility through which a person makes, or can make, non-cash payments to more than one person is generally a financial product. A non-cash payment is one made otherwise than by physically handing over notes and coins, and ASIC says the definition is broad enough to cover meeting a money obligation with something other than currency, including digital assets.
The sheet applies the test to tokens promoted and widely used as a means of payment, and to wallets, noting a 2024 Federal Court decision in which a wallet was found to be a non-cash payment facility. It also records limits: the single payee exception and the exclusion for incidental financial products in section 763E.
A token representing a thousandth of a rented unit is not designed as a means of paying anyone, and nothing in the illustration suggests holders use it to settle debts. The test becomes relevant at the edges of the arrangement. If the company gave holders a wallet under its control through which they could send value to third parties, ASIC's wallet examples indicate that the wallet could be a non-cash payment facility in its own right. The classification of the property token and the classification of the tools used around it are separate questions.
| Test in INFO 225 | Version of the token that raises it | ASIC example it resembles |
|---|---|---|
| Managed investment scheme | Money pooled to buy the unit; company lets it and shares net rent or growth | Tokenised real estate |
| Security | Token carries votes and dividends in the owning company, or a promise to repay with interest | Tokenised bond |
| Derivative | Issuer owns no unit and promises a future payment measured by the unit's value | Traditional derivative |
| Non-cash payment facility | A wallet or payment token used around the arrangement to pay third parties | Digital asset wallets |
What licences follow
Once a token is a financial product, Part B of the sheet applies the ordinary licensing rules. A person generally needs an Australian financial services (AFS) licence to carry on a financial services business in Australia, and the licence covers only the products and services listed in its authorisations.
The services ASIC names are dealing, which includes issuing a product and arranging for others to deal; financial product advice; making a market, meaning regularly stating prices at which one will buy or sell on one's own behalf; and custody. On custody the sheet is direct: a person who controls the private keys for an address on a public blockchain is likely to be providing a custodial or depository service, while a self-custody product is unlikely to be one.
For the illustrative unit classified as a scheme, the sheet's statement is that an issuer operating a managed investment scheme offered to retail investors will likely need an AFS licence authorising it to act as a responsible entity, and must meet the additional obligations of a responsible entity. If the scheme is wholesale, the operator may still need a licence with the correct authorisations and must have a process to ensure that only wholesale clients invest. ASIC expects businesses to know who their investors are before relying on the wholesale exemptions.
Retail offers carry the further layer set out in Part C: a product disclosure statement and financial services guide, a target market determination under the design and distribution obligations, with significant dealings outside the target market notified to ASIC within 10 business days, internal dispute resolution and membership of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, and compensation arrangements, normally professional indemnity insurance.
A venue where the tokens change hands raises its own question. Part D states that a facility through which offers to buy or sell financial products are regularly made or accepted is a financial market, that operating one requires an Australian market licence unless exempted, and that trading in even one financial product is enough. A facility that provides a regular mechanism for parties to meet their obligations from those trades may be a clearing and settlement facility, regulated jointly by ASIC and the Reserve Bank of Australia. A platform listing tokens for one Queensland unit would be measured against the same definitions as one listing thousands of products.
The transitional position: no action until 30 September 2026
When ASIC published the updated sheet on 29 October 2025, it paired it with a sector-wide no-action position to give businesses time to consider the guidance and apply for a licence. The original end date was 30 June 2026.
On 4 May 2026, ASIC published a reminder that the deadline was approaching. It said firms needed to decide whether they required a new or varied AFS licence and apply by the deadline, that some could instead comply by becoming authorised representatives of an existing licensee, and that businesses needing a market licence or a clearing and settlement facility licence had to notify ASIC in writing and hold a pre-application meeting. It warned that unlicensed conduct carries fines that could reach 10% of annual turnover.
On 25 June 2026, ASIC extended the position by three months, to 30 September 2026, describing the move as a pragmatic response to the difficulties of transition. The updated class no-action letter covers digital asset firms applying for or varying an AFS licence, businesses operating under authorised representative or intermediary authorisation arrangements with a licensee, and firms that require a market or clearing and settlement facility licence. ASIC said it had received about 30 licence applications from digital asset businesses since October 2025.
A no-action position is not an exemption from the law and does not alter the classification of any token. It is a statement about how the regulator intends to use its enforcement powers during a defined period.
The legislative background has also moved. According to ASIC's 4 May item, the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Act 2026 passed Parliament on 1 April 2026, received assent on 8 April 2026 and commences on 9 April 2027. INFO 225 itself refers to the Government's proposals to introduce digital asset platforms and tokenised custody platforms as new kinds of financial product, and states that the sheet may be updated as those developments are finalised.
Where the token ends and the Queensland title begins
Nothing in INFO 225 changes who owns the unit. Titles Queensland's guidance on transferring freehold land describes the instrument that does: a Form 1 Transfer naming the people the property is transferred to, lodged with a Form 24 and a duty notation, and stating the tenancy where there is more than one transferee. In the illustration, that transfer named one company. A sale of a token from one holder to another is not a dealing with the lot, and nothing is lodged in the land register when it happens.
That gap is the reason the federal classification carries so much weight. A token holder's protection does not come from the register, which shows only the company. It comes from the terms on which the token was issued and from the body of financial services law that attaches if the token is a financial product: who may operate the arrangement, what had to be disclosed, where a complaint can be taken.
A token can record a promise about a Queensland unit. The land register still records the owner, and ASIC's tests decide what kind of promise the token is.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
