A survey by Gemini reveals that over two in five crypto owners in Australia first started investing in crypto in 2021.

About 81% of Australian crypto investors choose to hold their crypto investments for the long term with more than half of Australian crypto investors surveyed viewing cryptocurrency as a good way to diversify their assets.

While Australia’s crypto adoption rate is similar to western nations like the US and the UK, the country lags in terms of adoption in comparison to other APAC countries surveyed, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and India.

Australia’s investor and tax rules must keep pace with the rapid innovation in the $US2 trillion crypto market, as a chorus of business leaders told The Australian Financial Review Cryptocurrency Summit that an explosion of new business models and investment had grown too large to be considered fringe.

“Banks are getting to the point where they are willing to connect those two systems,” said Kain Warwick, Young Rich Lister and found of Synthetix, an early crypto derivatives platform governed by 85,000 users.

“It makes sense that banks will be the primary point where that connectivity is most effective, and that is the opportunity for forward-thinking banks.”

Nevertheless, Statistics show that more than 800,000 Australians transacted in crypto assets in the last 3 years, with an increase of 63% between 2021 and 2020.So much is crypto now becoming a part of everyday Australians’ investments, that the Federal Government this month issued a Consultation Paper inviting comment on the long-awaited introduction of a regulatory framework for crypto investment services.