The federal government must send a clear signal that it supports innovation in digital assets and tokenisation, or risk missing out on the productivity benefits already being captured by overseas peers such as the US, says the chief executive of the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, Talis Putnins.

Putnins told The Australian Financial Review Future of Finance Forum that the government must set the tone for industry, instead of the other way around, as his centre identifies early use cases in the expanding technology with bonds and mining royalties in a joint project with the Reserve Bank.