Treasury and Reserve Bank of Australia Consulted With Coinbase and Others
This week, private sessions were conducted about the Treasury’s consultation document on token mapping.
Australia’s central bank and Treasury have met in private with foreign crypto industry officials, including Coinbase’s vice president of international policy, Tom Duff Gordon, to discuss the future of digital assets and regulation in the country.
After traveling from London, Gordon was among those who responded to the Treasury’s token mapping consultation document issued last month. Token mapping identifies the core activities and functionalities of crypto-ecosystem products and mapping them to current legal frameworks.
Gordon told CoinDesk in an email that the Australian Treasury’s token mapping effort is “one of the most extensive and thoughtful studies we have seen on the issue” and that it “forms a strong foundation” for the Treasury’s impending draft regulations for crypto exchanges and custodians, which are expected later this year. It is beautiful that the industry may participate in an open and transparent regulatory rulemaking process.
According to The Australian, Gordon and John O’Loghlen, managing director of Coinbase Asia Pacific, met with government and policy players in Australia, which first reported the consultation.
As Gordon explained to The Australian, financial stability and the connections between the existing fiat financial system and the cryptocurrency system are of particular interest to central banks. “The Australian Treasury is more engaged and active in defining the framework, and we anticipate that the RBA will become more involved in the future.”
Coinbase’s response centered on transparency to ensure “consumers are not mislead when seeing financial information and that customers have the knowledge they need to make educated choices,” according to Gordon.
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