Australian consumer advocacy group calls for urgent regulation of cryptocurrencies – Bits Media

Australian consumer protection group Choice has called for the country's cryptocurrency market to be regulated as quickly as possible., to ensure user protection.

According to the Australian Associated Press, more and more people began to join the group complaints about cryptocurrency fraud and pyramid schemes. Therefore, Choice called on the authorities to speed up regulation of the industry. Group spokesman Patrick Veyret (Patrick Veyret) stressed:

“Choice has received complaints from many Australian residents about financial losses and other harm after purchasing cryptocurrency assets, which turned out to be wrong, what they were thought to be. We have all seen the collapse of many cryptocurrency exchanges, and many citizens lost all their money with no way to get it back.".

According to the group, for the last year at least 12% Australians invested in cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. More 11% respondents are interested in purchasing digital assets. At the same time, the majority of respondents were in favor of introducing measures to protect consumers, similar to the stock market.

“The cryptocurrency market is growing at a tremendous pace, but our laws can't keep up with him. More and more Australians are buying crypto assets, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, without adequate consumer protection. However, they expect the same level of consumer protection, as when working with other financial products", – noted Veyret.

For 2021 year the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission received more than 10 000 reports of cryptocurrency fraud. Total loss for users, according to these reports, amounted to about 129 Mill of Australian dollars.

In mid-May, the Australian Taxation Office required Australian citizens to report profits or losses from transactions with digital assets on their tax returns..