I previously reported on how cryptocurrency has been legal in Australia since 2013 and Aussies have been able to utilise cryptocurrency as payments to retailers. The post can be found Here Unfortunately the uptake by Australian retailers has been low with only a few coffee shops and niche stores accepting the payment option.
But the benefits of being an Australian has the ability to enable us to purchase, trade and engage with crypto since 2013.
In my above post I briefly went over the tax requirements but it is important to seek professional advice as I could be wrong but from information ascertained if you earn crypto you pay income tax or add it to your annual tax income statement. If you day trade it's CGT event.
KYC is a thing but it isn't onerous the responsibility is on the investor to do the right thing so you need to keep records of your trades in the event the tax department wishes to audit your trading.
Singapore expansion
Like Australia, Singapore is also expanding its crypto industry and beginning to open up and trial new opportunities for its citizens.
As a result Singapore has started taking applications from exchanges to provide services in their island nation. At current Binance Asia has a license to provide services and over 170 other exchanges applied for licensing from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Source
Source
The Australian exchange Independent Reserve successfully beat exchanges such as Coinbase to approval and all the other applicants.
The move comes as regulators seek to put in protections against price manipulation and meeting anti money laundering regulations which have been a significant barrier to wide spread adoption.
Source
In a press release which can be found Here Independent Reserve welcomes the acceptance to provide services in Singapore which is seen as a growth country.
Singapore expects that Cryptocurrency trading and the trading of digital assets to increase by 20% to 30% annually over the next few years as widespread adoption begins to take hold Source as a result Singapore anticipates the growth of service providers to also increase and will begin approving exchanges that meet regulatory requirements.
Upon other approved exchanges that relocated to Singapore amidst the mass exodus from China are Huobi Asset Investments and Huobi Mall. The exchanges migrated to Singapore to avoid the nation wide ban in China and seek to continue to offer services just not to mainland Chinese nationals.
Crypto Adoption
It's great that we're now seeing widespread crypto adoption. For me living in Australia having it legal since 2013 but only commencing in 2018 has been a significant barrier to the rest of the world as I haven't been able to utilise the full potential of block chain and crypto trading.
However, I rest easy knowing that my activity on Hive is legal and adding my small annual earnings to my income statement is minute and doesn't actually impact my tax requirements all that much.
It's kind of like a small savings account that I am working to. Participation in Decentralised Finance is also an earning based tax event which makes services like CUB Defi lucrative and suffering heavy losses means I can negate tax. Although my Hive account keeps the cash going across to the ATO.
It's fantastic to see my country welcoming to digital assets and will surely see a significant amount of job creation in the new age of financial services and international money settlements.
At current there are over 230,000 users on Independent Reserve and the ATO estimates 300,000 total Australians trading digital assets.
This shows that even with full legal status there are still many barriers people face in crypto trading and hesitation in widespread adoption.
After all, it is still just fake interwebs money written in code. Well that's the mainstream view.
So the question is how do we drive widespread use and adoption?
Perhaps it's just a matter of time.
images source provided and supplemented by canva pro subscription, this is not financial advice and readers are urged to do their own research or access professional advice