Australia’s Commonwealth Bank Halts Crypto Trading Pilot

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank halted its crypto trading pilot citing more regulatory guidance is needed so let’s find out more in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank is putting a stop to the launch of a crypto trading service with no given timeframe to resume the proejct. Initailly announced in November, that the service could enable 6.5 million bank app users to purcahse and sell up to 10 cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Ethereum, and bitcoin. After the pilot, the launched partnership with Gemini and Chainalysis, the bank plans to roll out even more features this year.

As the market dropped into chaos with the Terra collapse last week, the Commonwealth Bank is pausing the proejct and has no speciifc date to continue with its launch. The CEO of the bank Matt Comyn said:

“As events of the last week have reinforced, it is clearly a very volatile sector that remains an enormous amount of interest.”

He also stressed that there’s a lot of volatility and awareness but also a lot of itnerest from regulators and people that think of ways to regulate crypto. The bank participated in Gemini’s $400 million funding round and wants to play a key role in providing input into regulating cryptocurrencies. His company is that before it gets to the pilot stage, there will be the right regulatory outcome:

“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.”

The Australian government announced more plans to bring the industry out of the shadows with a new regulatory framework. A part of the initaitive includes the introduction of licensing regime for exchanges with the Federal Treasury holding consultations on the issue.

As recently reported, In a press release, the Australian tax authority reminded the consumers that selling a token can attract capital gains tax as it would for the sale of property, shares, and other assets. The taxes on the sales of digital tokens like NFTs were identified as one of the areas where the regulator is seeing many errors. According to the ATO guidelines, a net capital loss can mean that the taxpayers are entitled to a reduction on future capital gains but not on any of the other income.