Bitcoin blowback
The cryptocurrency is booming again, but don't expect any support from Australia's top financial officials. "I don't understand it," says RBA governor Michele Bullock.
Crypto FOMO has swept through markets in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election in the US, following a campaign where the industry played an outsized lobbying role.
This week, Nasdaq-listed crypto giant Coinbase turned its gaze Down Under, signalling its intention to repeat that election playbook next year in Australia in pursuit of clearer regulation, as Daniel Van Boom reported. But any notion of a new dawn for digital currencies here faces serious institutional resistance.
At the corporate regulator ASIC’s annual forum in Sydney on Tuesday, three of the country's most powerful financial officials were in furious agreement on the topic, with RBA governor Michele Bullock the most dismissive.
“Please don’t call it an alternative currency,” she said. “It’s not a currency, it's not money, it’s being used as some sort of asset. I don't understand it but I don't really see a role for it, certainly not in the Australian economy or any advanced economy,” she said.
