Fintech firms will adopt blockchain this decade | Australia

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Fintech firms will adopt blockchain this decade | Australia

By Sam Grant - min read
Image of a compass pointing towards blockchain technology text

An Australian Government report claims blockchain technology will be key to all Fintech & Regtech companies in the next 10 years

The report highlighted that all the Fintech companies would have to embrace this technology to stay productive in the future. Late this week, the Select Committee on FinTech and RegTech posted an interim copy of the report.

The report cites blockchain technology over 50 times as a direct response to the country’s first recession in about 30 years caused by the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. Defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the recession was confirmed by the Australian treasurer’s announcement on September 2.

The recession signals tough times ahead as the economy shrank by 7% in the April-June quarter. The interim report contains several suggestions on how Australia can “embrace technology” to become more aggressive and competitive on the global scale.

A statement by the committee head, Andrew Bragg, read, “It is my hope this interim report can be seen as a series of quick wins: new jobs and more choices”.

The report makes several references to both distributed ledger and blockchain technologies. It even cites submissions to the Committee that the power and potential of blockchain can be “estimated at $175 billion annually within five years and $3 trillion by 2030”.

It also quotes Michael Bacina — a financial consultant at Piper Alderman — explaining how the applications of blockchain would snowball across the financial space, “Most fintech and regtech projects will either be built predominantly on distributed ledger technology or blockchain or heavily using that within the next ten years”.

The Initial Coin Offerings tax treatment issue was also discussed, with proposals for the regulatory structure around ICOs to be created to promote, rather than hinder, developments.

Power Ledger’s Executive Chairman, Dr. Jemma Green, reported that over $26 billion had been collected through ICOs. However, the country had only realized less than one percent of this. She further explained that adopting the new tax regulations would help Australia maximise on the chance “to capture a bigger piece of that $26 billion pie,” this in turn will create 100s of employment opportunities.

The Committee is set to submit the final report in eight months i.e. April 2021.