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The Australian authorities have launched a large-scale restructuring of legislation related to digital assets. The draft law submitted for discussion wants to integrate cryptocurrency services into the existing system of financial regulation. The main part of the new legislation is mandatory licensing for platforms that work with crypto.

According to Daniel Mulino, Assistant Minister of Finance, this document is the basis for the digital asset development strategy that the government announced earlier.

Now the authorities are actively collecting feedback from the crypto industry in order to finalize the bill. The most important change is the change of the regulator.

If now crypto exchanges that are engaged in simple exchange are registered only with AUSTRAC, then soon they will have to obtain an AFSL license. This means that they will be monitored by ASIC, which will entail stricter reporting and control.

The new rules will also apply to complex operations, such as staking or working with "wrapped" tokens. The authorities made this decision because there were cases when crypto companies simply disappeared with clients' money. Now the storage of cryptocurrencies and transactions will be strictly regulated.

There will be serious fines for violating the rules – up to 15.5 million Australian dollars or 10% of the company's annual turnover. But there are exceptions for "small and low-risk" platforms. The criteria are the volume of assets per client and the annual turnover of the platform.

The Australian authorities have decided to change their approach and instead of the previous freedom of action, stricter rules are being introduced for the crypt. The main task is to make investors feel safe and able to predict the development of events. At the same time, digital assets are finally officially recognized as part of the financial world.