Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee is considering a new bill that would require crypto exchanges and tokenization platforms to operate in accordance with the country’s existing financial services regime.
Summary
- Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee has backed a bill that would bring crypto exchanges and tokenised custody platforms under the country’s financial services licensing regime.
- Platforms that hold customer assets would be required to meet ASIC custody and settlement standards and follow governance and disclosure rules.
Australian regulators are pushing for the passage of the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025, which regulators hope will bring “digital asset platforms” (DAPs) and “tokenised custody platforms” (TCPs) under a clear licensing and oversight framework.
The goal is to prevent a repeat of failures involving platforms that hold customer assets, as seen in the past with high profile collapses such as FTX.
As previously reported by crypto.news, the legislation was first introduced in November last year and would require digital asset and tokenized custody platforms to operate under the Corporations Act and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act.
To comply with the framework, platforms will have to meet ASIC set custody and settlement standards, provide tailored disclosures for retail clients, and operate under platform-specific conduct and governance requirements, while small providers with annual transaction thresholds under 10 million Australian dollars ($7 million) would be exempt.
However, some industry participants have argued that the bill’s broad “digital token” and “factual control” tests could inadvertently include wallet software and infrastructure providers within the regulatory scope.
Concerns come at a time when firms like Ripple are looking to expand their presence in the Australian market and obtain the required regulatory licenses to operate in the country.
US blockchain firm Ripple Labs backed the concept of “control” as the “appropriate nexus” for defining the regulatory perimeter but said the framework would need adjustments to better accommodate modern security architectures such as multi party computation wallets.
Further, the company warned that under a strict reading of the “factual control” test, technology providers that only hold a single key shard in a multi party setup could be misclassified as regulated custodians even though they cannot independently move client assets.
The committee has acknowledged these concerns but has sided with Treasury’s proposal to refine the regulatory perimeter through future regulations rather than rewriting the core definitions in the bill.
