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Australia’s financial services minister, Jane Hume, has said the cryptocurrency industry is “not a fad,” nor should the government be fearful of decentralized finance (DeFi), per The Guardian.
“As an industry, and as a government, we need to acknowledge [crypto] is not a fad. We should tread cautiously, but not fearfully,” Hume reportedly said during an Australian Financial Review summit today.
Hume also added that the crypto industry was “not going away any time soon.”
“Don’t be the person who thought the iPhone would never take off because people would prefer to have their music and telephone on separate devices. Don’t be the person in 1995 who said the internet was just a place for geeks and criminals and would never become mainstream,” she also said.
Hume’s comments come six months after she first publicly spoke out in favor of the crypto industry.
Hume, Australia, and crypto
Back in May of this year, Hume said the government would not impede on Australians looking to get into the crypto space.
“If you want to invest in Dogecoin, I won’t stand in your way. Personal opportunity and personal responsibility are two sides of the same coin,” she said at the time.
She also said cryptocurrencies were “an asset class that will grow in importance.”
Hume’s words are a far cry from the position of other governments and regulators around the world, who have collectively warned against the risks inherent in the crypto industry
One such example is the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which has routinely warned against the crypto industry this year.
In January, the FCA banned crypto derivatives for retail investors, claiming crypto products were “ill suited” to retail customers due to a number of factors, including financial crime, price volatility, a lack of customer understanding and a lack of reliable product valuations.
The FCA has also sharply criticized Binance, the industry’s largest crypto exchange, calling the platform “incapable” of being regulated after it failed to provide basic information to the regulator.
In the United States, crypto is similarly raising the ire of regulators.
Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has previously said that crypto is in dire need of consumer protection laws. He also said the DeFi industry could well be rife with unregistered securities.