Crypto Senate inquiry recommends crypto law changes to set Australia up as digital innovation hub.
ABC News posted this useful article summarising the report, and the full report can be found here on the Parliament of Australia website.
Report Recommendations
Most of the report reviews how cryptocurrency will affect the economy and financial services but one of the most interesting for the crypto mining community is Recommendation 7 suggesting that “businesses undertaking digital asset ‘mining’ and related activities in Australia receive a company tax discount of 10 per cent if they source their own renewable energy for these activities.” Recommendation 6 is also important as there is currently very little guidance on how miners need to report their ongoing token accumulation and expenditures.
A quick summary of the recommendations is shown below. The Report lists the first 8 recommendations as the core of the report and add another 4 recommendations specifically for dealing with ‘de-banking’ issues.
Conclusions
The Senate Select Committee’s conclusion for the report was “Australia has significant potential to keep advancing as a technology and financial centre, if we grasp the opportunity to update our regulatory frameworks, drive innovation and enhance our competitiveness. The committee commends this report and the recommendations in it to government, and industry, to drive this agenda forward“.
The committee chair, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, said he believed the recommendations struck the right balance between encouraging innovation and protecting consumers. Despite the looming federal election, Senator Bragg said he wanted the proposals legislated within 12 months.
We feel this shows a lot of promise and that Australia is seeing how it can work with emerging cryptocurrency services and not fighting against them as we see happening in other countries. Mind you, these are still just recommendations and the Government may, or may not, implement them. We will continue to follow the progress of these recommendations.
