Australian Senate panel backed digital-asset platform licensing bill

Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee recommended on March 16, 2026 that the Senate pass the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025. The report moved Australia’s proposed licensing system for digital-asset intermediaries through a significant parliamentary checkpoint, although the recommendation did not itself enact the legislation.

The committee said the bill would substantially improve digital-asset regulation and create stronger safeguards for Australian consumers. Its central institutional choice was to adapt the existing financial-services framework to businesses holding or managing digital assets, rather than construct an entirely separate cryptocurrency regulator.

What the bill proposed

The bill would define digital tokens, digital asset platforms and tokenised custody platforms. It would generally treat qualifying platforms as financial products and require businesses providing covered services to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence, subject to exemptions and adjustments for particular structures.

Licensed operators would face the general obligations attached to that licence as well as platform-specific requirements. The framework contemplated standards governing custody and safeguarding, recordkeeping, reconciliation, client-asset use, transaction execution and settlement. Operators would also need platform rules addressing matters such as eligibility and client disclosures. The proposal gave the Australian Securities and Investments Commission powers to establish detailed standards and use existing financial-product intervention authority.

The committee’s summary identified an exemption where the value of transactions on a platform did not exceed A$10 million per year. It also described targeted treatment for public digital-token infrastructure, custodial staking arrangements and wrapped tokens. Those provisions mattered because the bill was directed principally at intermediaries exercising control over client assets, not at treating every blockchain network or software participant as a licensed financial business.

Why the recommendation mattered

As of March 16, 2026, an Australian business could hold substantial client digital assets without automatically being subject to the complete set of safeguards that applied to conventional financial-service providers. Moving exchanges and custody platforms into the Australian Financial Services Licence system would connect crypto businesses to established expectations covering competence, conduct, disclosure and supervision.

That was institutionally important for both consumer protection and market access. A defined licensing route could give compliant operators more certainty about the applicable perimeter, while asset-holding and settlement standards could address risks that became visible when centralised crypto businesses failed while controlling customer property. The proposal did not remove operational or investment risk, guarantee the safety of licensed firms or regulate the underlying value of tokens.

The March 16 report also documented unresolved implementation questions. Submitters raised concerns about the meanings of possession and factual control, the interaction with existing financial-services law, international interoperability, client-money treatment and whether ASIC could process complex licence applications during the transition. The committee encouraged the government to provide additional practical guidance. Coalition senators supported the bill in principle but separately proposed a statutory review within two years and called for attention to debanking and regulatory expectations.

What was—and was not—decided

The committee’s recommendation was a parliamentary milestone, not a final licence requirement. The Senate still had to consider the bill, amendments remained possible, and important operating details depended on regulations, ASIC standards and guidance that were not complete on March 16, 2026. No conclusion about a particular exchange’s compliance status followed from the report.

Later context

Official legislation records show that the measure subsequently became the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Act 2026 on April 8, 2026. That later enactment confirms the proposal’s eventual legislative outcome but does not change its status on March 16, when the verified development was the committee’s recommendation that the Senate pass the bill.