During an interview with its local daily, media house the Sydney Morning Herald on January 22nd, Australian Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones broke down the roadmap of the country in terms of regulation for cryptocurrencies. Based on a statement by Jones, the Australian government and financial experts are working together to introduce legislation for digital assets.
To begin with, the government intends to roll out a token mapping exercise that will determine the sequence with which these digital assets will be regulated. From the token map, one can tell what crypto assets the Aussie government will regulate first.
The issue of regulation has become a global trend since the liquidity crunch and bankruptcy filing of the FTX Derivatives Exchange which happened in November last year.
Just like other nations, Australia sees beyond reasonable doubt the utmost need for strict and robust crypto regulation which will protect local customers and prevent a recurrence in the future.
Aussie to Treat Crypto as Financial Products
The finance minister confirmed that while the Aussie government plans to earnestly begin crypto regulation, the focus is mainly on unregulated digital assets that function as financial products. As it stands, the majority of crypto assets are not regarded as financial products, hence, leaving a large percentage of the industry unregulated.
“I’m not that attracted to setting up a completely separate regulatory regime for something that is, for all intents and purposes, a financial product,” Jones said after explaining that “I don’t want to pre-judge the outcomes of the consultation process we are about to embark on. But I start from the position that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck then it should be treated like one.”
Currently, there is a controversy over whether the government should categorize all digital assets as financial products in the incoming legislation.
While no decision has been made in this regard, the option is fully supported by the Aussie regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the Commonwealth Bank. On the other side of the room, Blockchain Australia, a crypto sector lobby group disagrees with this strategy.
