As crypto winter sets in once more, industry players in Australia, one of the world’s most crypto-friendly nations, watch closely for a shift in the regulatory climate.
Anthony Albanese, the new Australian Labor Party prime minister, has made regulating crypto a top priority. However, neither he nor his cabinet has given a clear indication of how it may approach the unregulated space.
“Labor campaigned for government without a policy for cryptocurrency,” says Senator Andrew Bragg, a member of the Liberal Party, which was recently cast into opposition after nine years in government.
The 37-year-old spearheaded a Senate report on crypto regulation last year that made 12 key recommendations on issues ranging from exchange registration to taxation and debanking. Speaking at the Australia Blockchain Week conference in March, he proposed the Digital Services Act, a legislative package that consolidated the report’s recommendations into law.
However, Bragg’s Liberal Party lost its parliamentary majority to the Labor Party in a federal election in May, and the act’s future remains uncertain.
“There have been no utterances about what Labor’s policies will be. It could be anything at this stage,” he added.
The Treasury declined to comment on its crypto policy plans for the report. So far, the office has only clarified that it will continue to exclude crypto from being taxed as a foreign currency, following El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender.
Industry folk can only guess what the new government might do next, but Ron Tucker, founder and chair-emeritus of lobby group Blockchain Australia, sees a “silver lining” to this pregnant pause. He warns against the kind of knee-jerk responses to market volatility seen in other countries.
“Though we need to protect consumers, if we…
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