Q+A: Crypto enters the financial mainstream
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Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics, and more. I'm Sean Aylmer. Crypto has come a long way over the past decade. What started as a niche investment is increasingly becoming part of the mainstream financial system. Regulators are paying closer attention, institutional investors are becoming more involved, and the technology behind digital assets is finding new applications well beyond cryptocurrencies themselves. Today is the first in a series of interviews with the team at crypto platform Coinbase, exploring the broader crypto space and what it all means for investors. Remember, this is general information only, and you should always seek advice tailored to your circumstances before making investment decisions.
John O'Loughlin is managing director APAC at Coinbase, a great friend of ours. John, welcome back to Fear and Greed Q&A. Thanks.
Great to be back, Sean.
Let's start with Australia. We seem to have matured somewhat. And the reason I say that in cryptocurrencies, and the reason I say that is that the regulatory landscape seems to have changed. And when regulators are getting involved, you know you're part of the mainstream. What are the big changes in the past couple of years?
Certainly, Sean. I think since 2022, when Coinbase formally entered the market, that in itself was a step in growing up and coming fully onshore. So we off-boarded millions of customers who have been onboarded in an offshore environment. And there are still offshore exchanges operating in Australia. And we try to make some noise about that because we don't feel that's in line with the new regime under ASIC and the AFSL. But there are certainly still offshore players marketing here, and that's not entirely kosher. That's in a bit of a gray zone. Since 2022, we then onboarded all these customers through, I would say, our very robust and formal KYC and AML processes. We hired compliance, anti-money laundering, know your customer, and the other one is counterterrorism financing.
And those kind of three acronyms are incredibly central to being part of effectively the fabric of a US trad fi or traditional finance environment, which we are because we're listed and we're regulated by the SEC in the United States. So we bring all that compliance and governance overlay into Australia. And that's really where we want to market ourselves as the trusted exchange. And that's been our wheelhouse. And I think that will continue to be a focus. But talking to where the market has come since then, we've kind of burnt the boats, hired finance, growth, accounting, legal compliance, boards of directors, and most recently from a couple of months ago, being one of the first overseas exchanges to receive an AFSL, are now coming under the regulatory guardrails of ASIC.
And that's serious stuff. You mentioned that's a major step that should give all sorts of users, both on the retail consumer side and the institutional side, certainty about what they're doing with Coinbase. So a lot's happened in four years, and we're super excited about the future.
So you hear lots of people complaining about regulation, but really it's a competitive advantage for Coinbase is what you're saying, because you are part of the regulated financial market.
Yeah, 100%. And to give you some numbers on what that meant, Austrac, who are the transaction monitoring authority in Australia, and they track where cash goes, where crypto goes, where checks go, any payments that move around the banking system between consumers is tracked by them. You had to be registered with them in the previous regime, and you still do. But that was quite a light touch kind of bar to reach in terms of regulation. They had over 400 entities registered as being in crypto in some way offering services. That might be a broker. That might be someone out in a house somewhere with a Bitcoin ATM. These are trying to be removed by the Attorney General's office right now. All sorts of part of the industry.
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