Crypto News: Australia Senate Panel Backs Digital Assets Bill

Key Insights:

• Crypto news: Australia’s Senate panel supported a bill to license many crypto platforms across the country.
• The bill would subject exchanges and custody firms to existing financial laws.
• Industry groups cautioned that custody definitions may also capture wallet tech providers.

Australia moved closer to a formal crypto licensing regime after a Senate committee supported the Digital Assets Framework Bill 2025. The recommendation advances a proposal that would subject many exchanges and tokenized custody firms to existing financial services laws. The bill now goes to the Senate for debate and final vote at a later date.

Australia Committee Support Advances Crypto Bill to Senate Vote

Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee recommended that the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 be passed. The move, announced on March 16, marked an important step in the country’s effort to tighten oversight of crypto businesses that hold customer assets.

The bill focuses on digital asset platforms and tokenised custody platforms. Under the proposal, both would be treated as financial products under the Corporations Act and the ASIC Act. As a result, most centralized exchanges and tokenized custody firms would need to operate under the Australian Financial Services Licence regime.

The push comes after years of debate over crypto supervision in Australia. It also reflects the pressure for stronger safeguards following the fall of major digital asset firms, including FTX. Lawmakers want to close gaps in oversight where platforms hold client funds that don’t clearly fit under older rules.

Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Daniel Mulino introduced the bill in November 2025. Since then, it has attracted the attention of regulators, legal organizations, and companies dealing in digital assets. The committee’s support now puts the issue before the full Senate.

Crypto News: Proposed Rules Would Raise Standards

If passed, the bill would require licensed firms to comply with custody and settlement standards set by ASIC. They would also be required to meet specific disclosure requirements for retail clients. In addition, they would be subject to platform-specific rules on conduct and governance.

That way, it would bring much of the crypto sector into Australia’s existing financial services system rather than creating a separate regime from scratch. Therefore, regulators would have a more direct framework for supervising firms controlling client assets.

Still, the bill wouldn’t apply to all businesses associated with digital assets. Smaller providers with transaction volumes of less than 10 million Australian dollars per annum would be exempt. Some public blockchain infrastructure providers would also be out of the proposed licensing net.

Industry Groups Caution Against Control Definitions

The main industry concerns focus on terminology in the crypto news. Groups mentioned in the committee report said that the definitions of “digital token” and “factual control” were too wide open. In their view, that language could describe businesses that offer technology instead of custody.

Law firm Piper Alderman identified risks to wallet software and infrastructure providers in shared-control setups. That issue is particularly relevant in multi-party computation systems, where different parties hold parts of a key. In those cases, one provider may not have the capacity to move assets on its own.

Ripple Labs also argued that the bill should better reflect contemporary models of wallet security, like MPC. The company supported control as the right boundary for regulation. However, it cautioned that a literal interpretation of “factual control” might misclassify technology providers as mere custodians.

That concern becomes more important when a provider is given a single key shard. Critics want the law to clarify that factual control exists only when an entity can transfer assets without the client’s cooperation. Even so, the committee declined to rewrite the bill’s fundamental definitions.

Instead, it endorsed the idea that Treasury intended to focus the regulatory perimeter through future regulations. That keeps the bill on the move but leaves some technical questions open. As such, some aspects of the industry may continue to wait for clearer compliance boundaries.

Coinbase Supports Progress, but Warns on Debanking

Coinbase welcomed the committee’s recommendation and viewed it as a positive step for Australia’s digital assets industry. The company argued that Australia has the capital and talent to play a larger role in crypto markets. However, it also said that clear rules are still necessary to release that potential.

At the same time, Coinbase pointed to another challenge the sector faced. It said debanking is also a serious problem for crypto businesses in Australia. That problem involves financial institutions cutting off or limiting access to banking for digital asset firms.

The company urged Canberra to act on the Council of Financial Regulators’ recommendations. That implies that licensing reform alone may not address wider constraints on sector operations.

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