Yesterday the Australian Federal Government released its
proposal paper on regulating the crypto industry (Paper). The
government proposes to regulate exchanges, custodians and other
digital asset service providers within the scope the Australian
Financial Services (AFS) licensing regime.
The AFS licensing regime is proposed, rather than a bespoke
crypto licence (or other existing licensing frameworks, such as the
Australian Markets Licence regime).
The Paper suggests that licensing would be tied to a range of
"financialised functions" (i.e token trading, staking,
tokenisation and token based capital raising). Non-custodial
exchanges appear to be in scope of the new proposals.