Australia moves to license crypto firms

Australia has finally done the obvious thing. It has pulled big crypto intermediaries into the same licensing system that already governs much of the country’s financial sector. The Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 passed both houses of Parliament on April 1, 2026, after being introduced in November 2025. It requires operators of digital asset platforms and tokenised custody platforms to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence, or AFSL, instead of sitting in the half-regulated space where many crypto firms have operated for years (aph.gov.au, lsj.com.au). That matters because Australia did not build a brand-new crypto regulator or a bespoke licensing silo. It used the machinery it already had. Treasury’s plan, first set out in March 2025 and then opened for consultation in September, was to treat these businesses less like exotic internet experiments and more like financial firms that hold customer assets and can blow up in familiar ways. The government said the reforms were meant to close gaps that let businesses hold unlimited client digital assets without the safeguards that apply elsewhere in finance (treasury.gov.au, ministers.treasury.gov.au, ministers.treasury.gov.au). The structure of the law is simple in concept, even if the drafting is not. The bill creates two new kinds of financial products inside the Corporations Act: digital asset platforms and tokenised custody platforms. Once a business falls into one of those buckets, the normal AFSL logic kicks in. That means obligations to act efficiently, honestly and fairly, bans on misleading conduct and unfair contract terms, clearer disclosure to customers, governance and risk controls, and access to dispute resolution and compensation arrangements if things go wrong (ministers.treasury.gov.au, aph.gov.au, asic.gov.au). The clever part is that the law targets intermediaries, not every token or every software project. Treasury said the draft would not impose a new licensing burden on digital asset issuers themselves or on businesses using tokens for non-financial purposes. Small operators also get breathing room. Platforms holding less than A$5,000 per customer and processing less than A$10 million a year are exempt. That keeps the regime focused on the places where retail customers can actually lose money because someone else is holding the keys (ministers.treasury.gov.au, (consult.treasury.gov.au), ministers.treasury.gov.au). That focus also explains why the law looks less radical than the headlines suggest. Australia’s securities regulator, ASIC, was already trying to fit parts of crypto into existing financial law when tokens or platforms functioned like financial products. It had updated guidance on digital assets and even floated transitional relief for some stablecoin and wrapped-token activity. The new statute does not replace that patchwork so much as finish the job. It gives ASIC explicit supervisory and enforcement powers over the newly defined platforms, and it lets the minister and ASIC expand parts of the regime later by legislative instrument if the market shifts again (asic.gov.au, asic.gov.au, aph.gov.au). There is still a long runway between passage and full compliance. Parliament’s bills digest says the framework starts 12 months after royal assent, and businesses then get 18 months to meet the new licensing and operational standards. That is a generous transition by design. It gives incumbents time to apply, restructure custody arrangements, and decide whether they want to be real financial firms or something smaller and exempt. On April 7, 2026, the most concrete fact is also the most revealing one: the era of running a large Australian crypto platform without an AFSL now has an expiry date (aph.gov.au, aph.gov.au, lsj.com.au).