The rise of NFTs
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Public curiosity in NFTs – or non-fungible tokens, a one-off authentic digital asset like an paintings or special-release music album that’s created with the know-how that underpins cryptocurrencies – soared in 2021.
An NFT by artist Beeple sold for $US70 million at an public sale held by public sale home Christies, whereas Twitter founder Jack Dorsey raked in $US2.9 million by promoting his first-ever tweet as an NFT.
Even the Australian Monetary Overview got in on the action, elevating 11.8888 Ether (price $US56,667 on the time) in a charity public sale of an NFT of its Younger Wealthy journal cowl.
New alternatives
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El Salvador grew to become the primary nation on the earth to simply accept Bitcoin as legal tender, which means it could possibly be exchanged for items and providers.
El Salvador has a big cash remittance business and a rising variety of locals and nationals based mostly overseas utilizing cryptocurrencies.
Again house, the Commonwealth Bank grew to become the primary native financial institution to permit its clients to commerce cryptocurrencies via its app, which is utilized by tens of millions of Australians.
The company watchdog ASIC additionally gave the green light to a spread of cryptocurrency-related ETFs, and an rising variety of fund managers and market watchers introduced plans to pursue cryptocurrency-related funding merchandise for his or her shoppers.
However there was a step backwards within the growth of cryptocurrencies, with China banning the energy-intensive mining of the cash.
New crypto regime
In December, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg revealed a set of sweeping regulatory adjustments geared toward bettering oversight of the cryptocurrency sector and together with new taxation therapies for digital belongings.
Frydenberg additionally raised the concept Australia might change into a pacesetter within the cryptocurrency sector via a central financial institution digital forex, and opened the door for a dialogue on a brand new kind of collectivist firm construction referred to as a decentralised autonomous organisation.
In the meantime, the Australian banking sector got a warning from the transactions regulator Austrac and a Senate committee for its widespread coverage of debanking clients – stopping to cope with clients – that ran cryptocurrency buying and selling companies.
Regulators’ warnings
Amid all of the optimistic buzz, there have been sage warnings from regulators concerning the risks of this largely unregulated market.
The ACCC said earlier this year that almost half of all complaints to client hotline ScamWatch had been concerning the digital belongings.
And the brand new chair of the company watchdog, Joe Longo, told a business summit: “In my opinion shoppers ought to method investing in crypto with nice warning”.
Dangers emerge
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A key instance of the dangers of the unregulated cryptocurrency market was highlighted by the collapse of Australian-based trade MyCryptoWallet in December.
In April, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed the website for the exchange had gone darkish for greater than a 12 months, leaving customers unable to entry Bitcoin and different digital belongings for 1000’s of {dollars}.
In the meantime, younger Australian cryptocurrency finfluencers used social media to construct fortunes and win legions of followers with crazy trading antics, and this masthead revealed the world’s greatest cryptocurrency on line casino was being operated out of Melbourne.
