Reposted. Original by Bayani

#Austriches

Hey all.

You may or not be aware of the recent proposal to further regulate “digital asset platforms” such as crypto exchanges, who currently require an AFSL because they deal with financial products and other high risk activities.

A fact sheet can be found here: https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-10/c2023-427004-fs.pdf

However, you may not realise that this proposal will create a new financial product, one that requires any entity providing an “asset holding” service, regardless of the asset being a financial product or not.

This expansion of regulatory control will thereby include bitcoin-only exchanges, requiring them to undertake the costs and the regulatory burden of an AFSL, despite not participating in the same high-risk activities crypto exchanges typically do.

It is strongly recommended to provide comment on this; high-risk activities deserve the regulations.

Bitcoin-only exchanges do not.

This will result in raising the barrier to entry for new participants, and push consumers into leaving their bitcoin in the hands of people who have a greater exposure to high risk activity.

I’ll be sharing a version of my response if you care to use any/all of it.

Please share this with others who may be interested; Twitter, Facebook, Nostr, etc.