Australia’s crypto sector is showing steady growth in user adoption and regulatory engagement, although banking barriers and legal uncertainty continue to weigh on the industry, executives said at the XRP Australia 2026 event in Sydney.
John O’Loghlen, APAC managing director at Coinbase, said multiple arms of government including Treasury and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have significantly strengthened their digital asset expertise as draft regulations progress.
“Multiple arms of government, mainly Treasury, who are writing the draft regulation and ASIC have thoroughly upskilled their teams and have pretty deep digital asset domain expertise internally, so I think there's been pretty positive movement,”
Said John O’Loghlen.
He added that institutional access is expanding through locally listed Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds and through Coinbase Global’s inclusion in the Standard & Poor’s 500, which he said allows investors to learn about the sector “in a very passive way.”
A 2025 report from Independent Reserve found national crypto adoption reached 31%, up from 28% in 2024, while 29% of respondents said they planned to invest within the next 12 months.
Kate Cooper, Australia CEO of OKX, said growth is increasingly driven by sophisticated traders and trustees of self-managed super funds, noting that many new SMSFs are being established specifically to gain digital asset exposure because traditional super funds do not offer it.
“It's absolutely still a challenge in the industry,”
Said Kate Cooper, referring to ongoing debanking issues, while crypto lawyer Bill Morgan said the regulatory landscape remains in “wait and see” mode amid Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s appeal against Block Earner and broader legislative delays.
At the time of reporting, XRP price was $1.42.