Australia’s regulators recently provided rare updates on their plans for the digital assets sector, including a draft framework for stablecoins and increased enforcement against unlicensed entities. The announcement was made at the “Digital Assets: Anchoring the Digital Economy” event hosted by Blockchain Australia, the country’s industry policy authority.
Previously, Australia’s Treasury had announced plans to release draft legislation covering licensing and custody rules for crypto asset providers by the end of 2024. Now, this draft may also include stablecoin regulations.
Chris Adamek, director of the Australian Treasury’s digital asset policy unit, stated:
“The digital asset platform reforms have been allocated a drafting spot with The Office of Parliamentary Counsel (responsible for drafting and publishing Australian laws) that would see the exposure draft released before the end of this year.”
“Within that drafting slot, there are various reforms and each has a different priority to the payments reforms, which would include our proposed framework for regulating stablecoins sit within that same slot, and they’ll be sort of done one after the other. Given that overlap, reps (representatives) are hoping that both of them will be released at the same time,” the director added.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it was providing advice to colleagues in the Treasury and holding regular meetings with international peers, including the EU, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and North America, to learn from their actions against digital asset firms. Dr. Rhys Bollen, senior executive leader of digital assets at ASIC, highlighted their active monitoring of international cases and collaboration with global counterparts:
“We are actively monitoring cases overseas and interacting regularly with our overseas peers,” said Dr Rhys Bollen, senior executive leader of digital assets at ASIC. “We had an hour on the phone with the SEC this morning talking about some of the work that they’re doing and what we can learn from that. We have run half a dozen (cases) already that interact with the digital assets and crypto assets base and we do have more.”
At the event, ASIC emphasised the importance of crypto entities adhering to legal precedents set by recent cases. Dr. Bollen advised industry participants to regularly review their listed tokens, products, and services, and to consult legal advice to stay compliant with the latest legal developments. He also mentioned that ASIC would appeal recent judgments favouring crypto entities like Block Earner and BPS Financial Pty Ltd. ASIC has recently taken legal action against Binance Australia and eToro, while major Australian banks have implemented partial restrictions on crypto transactions due to scams.
Blockchain Australia has rebranded as the Digital Economy Council of Australia (DECA) and will include a membership category for banks.
