Australia’s Financial Watchdog Offers Exemptions to Stablecoin Intermediaries

Australia’s Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it plans to exempt stablecoin intermediaries from the requirement to hold a financial services license.

The financial watchdog said it granted class relief for parties engaging in the distribution of a stablecoin from an existing licensed issuer in an announcement on Thursday.

The exemption means the intermediaries do not require a a separate Australian financial services (AFS), Australian market or clearing and settlement facility licenses when providing services related to stablecoin issued by an existing AFS licensee.

Stablecoins, crypto tokens pegged to the value of a traditional financial asset such as a fiat currency, have become front and center of different countries’ developing regulation of the cryptocurrency industry, following the introduction of regulatory regimes in markets such as the U.S. and Hong Kong.

More broadly, Australia showed signs of embedding digital assets into its economy earlier this year with the publication of a Treasury whitepaper, describing how the government planned to embrace tokenization, real-world assets and wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to make financial markets more efficient.