Australian crypto entrepreneur and investor Fred Schebesta has described the Australian authorities’s prioritization of token mapping as “wonderful,” however warns that dashing it could result in detrimental results on the economic system.
Schebesta’s feedback come after Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers launched a press release on Aug. 22 stating that the “treasury will prioritize token mapping work” in 2022 to show how “crypto assets and related services should be regulated.”
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Schebesta believes Australia already has a “fledgling” crypto industry but needs to “align with the other major markets and their regulations.”
Schebesta added that the “intricacies” of token mapping will not be clear, and “things are changing as well.”
Schebesta is an Australian entrepreneur and investor — finest often known as the co-founder of Finder, an Australian comparability web site. Schebesta can also be a co-founder of crypto funding fund Hive Empire Capital and an advisor for Balthazar, an NFT gaming platform.
He defined that if “we rush” — the token mapping train could flip away crypto firms, significantly if there is a “very different approach” to different international locations.
Schebesta pressured that it isn’t the time to “rush it out,” however take the time “to just take it easy and really, really do some deeper analysis.”
The token-mapping announcement from Australia’s new Labor authorities got here three months after it got here into energy, breaking a protracted silence on how it will method crypto regulation within the nation.
At the time, Treasurer Chalmers stated the federal government needed to reign in on the “largely unregulated” crypto sector.
“As it stands, the crypto sector is largely unregulated, and we need to do some work to get the balance right so we can embrace new and innovative technologies,” he said.
Related: Australia’s new government finally signals its crypto regulation stance
While many in the industry lauded the announcement as an “important step” for the industry, some were disappointed that there the country was not “further along” the path to regulatory certainty.
Australian lawyer Liam Hennessy, partner at Gadens told Cointelegraph that Australia has been at the “forefront of the crypto developments,” however worries that the nation is “slowly falling behind the U.K. and U.S.” attributable to failure to create guidelines for these “in the crypto industry, in particular those in financial services.”
Hennessy believes that whereas token mapping is significant, it should not be the first focus for regulators.
“It should be secondary to actually creating some tax rules and regulations around licensing that we can give to our businesses that really need to hear it so they can compete with our global competitors.”
He fears that Australia is falling into the trap of “thinking that a little bit of attention from the government will solve the problems,” which he believes that the token mapping exercise “to some extent, is being considered as.”
Schebesta stated he spoke at a senate listening to in 2021 the place he highlighted “Australia would have a huge influx of new businesses […] because it’s a safe, stable, and great regulatory place to build their business,” including that “tens of thousands” of jobs can be created “in the next two to three years.”