Australia has decided to continue treating cryptocurrencies as assets.
According to the Australian government’s budget announcement on Tuesday, legislation will be put upon treating digital currencies such as bitcoin as a virtual assets.
The government has taken the move to allow the taxation of digital assets. It means that investors would pay capital gains tax on profit from selling crypto assets through exchanges and when they trade digital assets.
The new law does not apply to central bank digital currency (CBDC) or government-issued digital currency. Instead, they would be considered foreign currency.
Australia’s crypto sector is highly unregulated, but the Treasury Department announced in August that the government would take the initiative to prioritise ‘token mapping’, which will help identify how crypto assets and related services should be regulated.
The country is also working on introducing CBDCs.
The Reserve Bank of…
