Australia’s real asset infrastructure leadership opportunity is emerging as two global shifts redraw the foundations of the global economy. One is the electrification of everything. The other is a quiet reset in the financial system. Metals—once treated as passive stores of value—are becoming active components in both.
The energy transition is widely accepted but still structurally underestimated. The modern grid is being rebuilt in real time, and metals are the bottleneck. Silver, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper—these are no longer “just commodities.” They are the essential inputs for electric vehicles, solar infrastructure, AI compute, and digital storage. Scarcity is rising. Strategic competition is heating up. And yet, the systems for accessing and using these metals are still built for the last cycle.
In parallel, finance is undergoing a transformation of its own. There’s a rethink underway about what constitutes money, liquidity, and trust. As sovereign debt mounts, institutions wobble, and programmable rails go mainstream, real assets are being re-evaluated not as exotic holdings, but as infrastructure. Gold in particular is being re-established as core liquidity—not just by central banks, but by retail platforms, fintechs, and global institutions seeking transparency and programmability in an uncertain world.
We’re witnessing a reset of the world’s foundational systems—and real-world assets are moving from the edge of finance to its core.
Real Assets Need Infrastructure
For metals to matter in this emerging system, they need more than ETFs, wrappers or passive storage. They need modern infrastructure: composable, auditable, and ready to integrate across real-world use cases.
This shift is no longer fringe. Gold and other metals are being positioned as programmable collateral and real-time liquidity — particularly in a world that demands both independence and interoperability.
One example of this approach comes from Rush, which has built a cross-channel platform where customer holdings are maintained in insured physical metals and can be used across app, API, and partner integrations. Users can buy, sell, transfer, spend from, or embed their holdings into SMSFs, FX wallets, wealth platforms, rewards programs, and micro-payments. Institutional lending, additional metals, and BYO-metal onboarding are next.
It’s a new kind of utility for real assets—legal, liquid, and programmable.
A Global Opportunity. A Natural Australian Edge.
Australia is unusually well positioned to lead in this emerging category.
We’re the world’s second-largest gold producer. We have one of the most trusted regulatory regimes. And we’re home to some of the world’s most successful digital asset infrastructure founders.
One of them, Synthetix, is among the top five DeFi protocols globally. At Rush, we’ve partnered with several early engineers and advisors from that ecosystem to help bring foundational expertise in digital asset infrastructure into the realm of real-world assets. It’s a rare blend of mining-market realism and DeFi-grade technical talent, applied to something new: modern metal rails.
Australia is also home to some of the best capital allocators per dollar in the world—we now rank #1 globally for unicorns created per VC dollar invested. Add to that the country’s credibility as a global custodian of metals, and you have all the ingredients to lead. But will we back it?
Why Now
The world isn’t waiting for Australia to leverage its natural edge. Offshore capital is already shifting to offshore projects, and tokenisation of real-world assets (RWAs) has already surpassed US$24 billion (Galaxy Digital, 2024). Just weeks ago, Cantor Fitzgerald announced a $5 billion fund dedicated to tokenised real-world assets. Meanwhile, gold is seeing record central bank accumulation and surging interest from retail platforms looking for stable, uncorrelated liquidity.
The shift is underway, but the platforms that can bridge physical integrity with digital flexibility are still rare.
Unless we act, we’ll cede that role to others. With our custody strength, mining footprint, and digital talent, we’re uniquely positioned to help shape the next generation of asset infrastructure.
We can either lead — or transact on someone else’s terms.
This is a moment for serious ambition. To lead, we’ll need collaboration across founders, investors, policymakers and regulators — and the foresight to recognise that real assets are no longer peripheral. They’re becoming foundational.
Let’s build the systems that reflect that.
About the Author
Jodi Stanton is the award-winning founder and CEO of Rush, an Australian-regulated fintech building infrastructure for real assets. Her career began in financial risk and derivatives on Wall Street, later spanning roles with global insurers, McKinsey, and tech startups before relocating to Australia. A long-time observer of increasingly fragile financial systems, geopolitical uncertainty, and the growing gap between capital and resilience, Jodi saw an opportunity for Australia to lead in building trusted, programmable alternatives to traditional money. Rush is the result of that conviction — combining institutional-grade metals with modern financial utility to help individuals and systems adapt to a changing world. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodistanton/
About Rush
Rush is an Australian-regulated fintech building a modern financial stack for real assets — starting with gold and silver, and expanding toward future-critical metals. The platform provides digital access to physical bullion through app, API, and partner integrations. With customers in over 15 countries and a growing set of global use cases, Rush is helping position real assets as programmable, credit-ready infrastructure as finance and energy systems converge. https://rush.gold/
