Australia’s Largest Bank Halts Crypto Trading Pilot, Says More Regulation Needed

Commonwealth Bank (CommBank), Australia’s largest financial institution, is placing a brake on the launch of its crypto buying and selling service, with no agency timeframe to renew the venture, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

First introduced in November, the service would allow some 6.5 million CommBank app customers to purchase and promote as much as ten cryptocurrencies, together with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

After the preliminary pilot, launched in partnership with crypto alternate Gemini and blockchain forensic agency Chainalysis, the financial institution deliberate to progressively roll out extra options this 12 months.

However, because the market plunged into chaos in the course of the TerraUSD collapse final week, CommBank is now pausing the venture, with no time set on when it is going to resume.

“As events of the last week have reinforced, it is clearly a very volatile sector that remains an enormous amount of interest,” Matt Comyn, the CEO of Commonwealth Bank stated in a tech briefing this week.

Still, as Comyn careworn, “alongside that volatility and awareness,” there’s additionally loads of “interest from regulators and people thinking about the best way to regulate [cryptocurrencies].”

Commonwealth Bank: “Appropriate regulatory outcome”

Commonwealth Bank, which participated in Gemini’s $400 million funding spherical final November, additionally desires to play “a leading role” in offering enter into the regulation of cryptocurrencies.

Comyn’s hope is that earlier than it could possibly advance to the pilot’s subsequent stage, “the most appropriate regulatory outcome” will be discovered.

“Our intention still, at this stage, is to restart the pilot, but there is still a couple of things that we want to work through on a regulatory front to make sure that that is most appropriate,” added CommBank’s boss.

Last December, the Australian authorities introduced plans to deliver the crypto trade “out of the shadows” with a “world-leading” regulatory framework.

Part of the initiative consists of the introduction of a licensing regime for crypto exchanges, with the federal Treasury at present holding consultations on the matter. Responses will be submitted till May 27, 2022.