Bipartisan Lawmakers Push Australia’s Reserve Bank To Back Bitcoin And Cryptocurrency

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Labor and Coalition senators have called on Australia’s Reserve Bank to embrace Bitcoin as an official form of currency with fiat or risk the future competitiveness of Australia’s $145 billion a year financial services industry.

The push for the new regulation comes from Australian Labor party senator Sam Dastyari and Liberal Senator Jane Hume after the Bitcoin digital asset soared to an all-time high of $4,000 per bitcoin on Monday.

Senator Dastyari said when he first raised Bitcoin in the Senate, one of his colleagues came to him and said: ‘I don’t get what the issue is, don’t they just melt all the coin bits they don’t use?”

Until May, Bitcoin was classified as an “intangible asset” by the Australian Tax Office, according to SMH. For Australia this meant the Goods and Services Tax was charged twice during transactions – once on the product being purchased and once after receiving your Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, another Senator, Matt Canavan, has also shown public candor for the Australian central bank to back Bitcoin and the Blockchain Technology as well as greater government support for cryptocurrency.

“The question for Australia is are we going to follow or are we going to lead. We need to find a bipartisan way of doing this,” Senator Dastyari said.

“We can’t compete with our Asian neighbors when it comes to producing cheap goods and services anymore. We can compete when it comes to financial services but that is going to mean big, bold decisions,” he added.

“This will be a revolutionary leap for the Reserve Bank and for Australian financial institutions, what we want to do here in Parliament is to create the political environment to allow that leap [for an Australian bitcoin blockchain] to occur,” he concluded.

Last week, South African  Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba announced they would start to look at cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin with a “balanced approach.”

While in China, the country continues to expand their BTC markets with an increasing number of stores accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And now the country is looking into utilizing the blockchain for social taxation and electronic invoicing, which is a huge step for any government while testing a digital token.

[RELATED: Preparing A Digital Token: China To Use Blockchain For Social Taxation And Electronic Invoicing]

So all over the world countries are starting to look at cryptocurrencies with a feasible approach to implementation, while the U.S. lags behind as the SEC is threatening the future of some exchanges to the point where they need to shut down like Bitfinex. Although, U.S. corporations seem to see that Blockchain technology is the future with CEOs of companies like Twitter, and Fidelity labs both stating that Bitcoin and currency will change the world.

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