Crypto Absent from Australia's 40-Year Economic Forecast Despite 'AI Revolution' Focus
Australia's Treasury highlighted artificial intelligence as one of five key economic transitions for the nation's future, but Coinbase argues the document ignores critical digital financial systems that AI agents may require.
The Australian government's newly released 40-year economic projection has pinpointed artificial intelligence as a key driver among five significant transitions that will fundamentally shape the nation's economic landscape moving forward, yet cryptocurrency received no acknowledgment in the document.
Released on Monday by the Australian Treasury, the most recent Intergenerational Report characterized agentic AI systems as having achieved "significantly" enhanced capabilities, autonomy and widespread adoption — even exceeding human performance levels on certain benchmarks. The remaining four major transitions identified include geopolitical tensions, demographic aging, the transition toward renewable energy sources and Australia's industrial evolution favoring the services sector.
The Intergenerational Report makes it clear that Australia's prosperity over the next 40 years will depend heavily on our ability to adopt new technology and lift productivity. And while the report focuses heavily on artificial intelligence, it completely misses the financial infrastructure those agents will need.
John O'Loghlen, Coinbase Australia country director
Earlier editions of the Intergenerational Reports similarly failed to examine digital assets. This most recent exclusion is particularly notable given that the Reserve Bank of Australia has intensified its attention on tokenized finance and modernizing financial infrastructure systems earlier this year, and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre projected that digital finance advancements could contribute 24 billion Australian dollars ($17.1 billion) in economic benefits on an annual basis.
Notwithstanding this exclusion, a different Treasury document titled the "Financial Innovation Strategy," made public on Sept. 3, does examine the connection between AI and financial infrastructure.
According to the report, agentic systems have the potential to expand automated and machine-to-machine transactions, generating heightened demand for payment systems that are real-time, interoperable and programmable in nature.
We've made good progress in recent years, including through the Digital Asset Platform framework, which has provided necessary regulatory clarity. The opportunity now is to bring the same focus to the tokenized stored-value facility framework for stablecoins, and clear rules for tokenized markets. Those are the rails digital finance — agentic finance included — will run on and getting them right is how Australia turns this opportunity into reality.
John O'Loghlen