Australian senator warns digital yuan poses national-security risk

Australian senator from New South Wales Andrew Bragg announced a new bill on digital assets, aimed, among other things, at the e-CNY.

“Australia must keep pace with global regulation of digital assets. Significant progress in this area has been achieved under the previous Coalition government,” he said.

The bill introduces licenses for cryptocurrency exchanges, custody services, and issuers of stablecoins, and sets disclosure requirements for intermediaries using the digital yuan within Australia.

In a comment to Cointelegraph, Bragg noted threats to Australia’s economy and called for the development of a ‘serious risk-management program arising from the creation CBDC‘.

According to him, the bill’s aim is to provide an ‘effective regulatory framework’ and information ‘provided by certain banks that facilitate the use or availability of the digital yuan in Australia’.

Bragg stressed that this is not an ‘accusatory position’, but merely ‘preparation and collection of information’. He called the approach justified.

“If the [Chinese digital] currency becomes widely adopted in the Pacific region or even in Australia, it would give China enormous economic and strategic power that it does not have today,” the senator explained in a comment to ABC.

He added that Australia would not benefit from the existence of a CBDC, because ‘privacy issues cannot be solved’.

In May 2021, Bragg called for the formation of ‘proper’ regulation of digital assets to maintain the country’s competitive edge and protect consumers.

In July 2022, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Philip Lowe stated the advantages of regulated cryptocurrencies over CBDC.

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