Australia outlook omits crypto as Coinbase flags AI finance needs

Australia's latest Intergenerational Report identified artificial intelligence as one of five major transitions expected to have a profound effect on the economy over the next 40 years. The report was published on Monday by the Australian Treasury. It described agentic AI systems as significantly more capable, autonomous and widely used, with performance above humans on some benchmarks. The other transitions are geopolitical conflicts, an aging population, a shift to clean energy and Australia's industrial transformation toward services. The report did not mention crypto or digital assets. Coinbase Australia country director John O'Loghlen said the report focused heavily on artificial intelligence but overlooked the financial infrastructure that AI agents will need. Previous Intergenerational Reports also did not address digital assets. The latest omission came despite the Reserve Bank of Australia increasing its focus on tokenized finance and financial infrastructure upgrades earlier this year. The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre estimated that digital finance innovations could generate 24 billion Australian dollars, or $17.1 billion, in annual economic gains. Treasury's separate Financial Innovation Strategy report, released on Sept. 3, addressed the link between AI and financial infrastructure. That report said agentic systems could increase automated and machine-to-machine transactions. It said this could create greater demand for real-time, interoperable and programmable payment systems. O'Loghlen said Australia had made progress through the Digital Asset Platform framework, which he described as providing necessary regulatory clarity. He said the next opportunity was to apply similar focus to the tokenized stored-value facility framework for stablecoins and to establish clear rules for tokenized markets. He said those systems would support digital finance, including agentic finance.