Cryptocurrency isn’t going anywhere, one Australian company submitted, and the local industry just wants to be covered by fit-for-purpose regulation.
When the government puts a call out for submissions on the future of finance in Australia, mentioning the words “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain” in its terms of reference, it should come as no surprise the responses include plans on how to profit from mining bitcoin and testimony that crypto is not just a Ponzi scheme. One submitter, Swyftx, an Australian cryptocurrency broker, has asked the Senate Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre to look at regulation, but in a manner that doesn’t stifle innovation. Specifically, it considers “de-banking” a barrier to success as a crypto business and has also requested a digital asset regulatory regime. “The basis for traditional banks unwillingness to bank digital assets companies to date, which have relied on some arbitrary and ill-advised notion of ‘increased risk’ related to digital assets is no longer an acceptable or good faith approach, and is beginning to look like anti-competitive behaviour born of self-interest and at the expense of consumer confidence and protection,” Swyftx said [PDF]. “A clear regulatory regime is needed which provides for government to prevent traditional banks withholding services to digital asset service providers (acting as unauthorised gatekeepers to the system), but which also establishes clear and robust registration and licensing requirements for digital asset service providers to assuage both consumer and bank concerns around the particular risks posed by individual digital asset service providers.
