Australia's world-leading crypto laws are at a crossroads: the inside story
Categories: Crypto News US
Australia'sworld-leading crypto laws are at a crossroads: the inside story
As crypto winter sets in once more, industryplayers in Australia,one of the worlds most crypto-friendly nations, watch closely for a shift inthe regulatory climate. Anthony Albanese, the new Australian Labor Party primeminister, has made regulating crypto a top priority. However, neither he norhis cabinet has given a clear indication of how it may approach the unregulatedspace.
LiberalParty member Senator Andrew Bragg says Labor campaigned for agovernment without a policy for the cryptocurrency, which was recently thrown intoopposition after nine years in government. The 37-year-old led a Senate reporton crypto regulation last year, which made 12 key recommendations on issuesranging from exchange registration to taxation and debunking.
Speaking at the Australia Blockchain Week conference inMarch, he proposed the Digital Services Act, a legislative package thatconsolidated the report's recommendations into law. The proposedself-regulation model was espoused by the establishment of the GlobalBlockchain Forum, an informal alliance, in 2016 after Tucker's group joinedwith counterpartsin Singapore and the United States.
It then grew to have a dozen other member countries thatcoordinated through a multilateral memorandum of understanding based on thepreexisting Australian code of conduct. Crypto ads are in the crosshairs of Australianregulators. The country’s top consumer watchdog, the AustralianCompetition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, recently took Meta to court,alleging the company is legally responsible for losses incurred by users whoengaged with scam crypto ads featuring fake celebrity endorsements that haverun on Facebook since 2019.
This has renewed the conversation in policy circles aboutconsumer protection for crypto investors. The Treasury paper also proposesrules for "secondaryservice providers who act as brokers, dealers, or operate markets for cryptoassets." Its stated logic is to reduce the risk faced by theconsumers in case the service providers become insolvent and cannot withdrawtheir money.However, critically, it specifies that these rules will not applyto “decentralizedplatforms or protocols”, except for DeFi.