Australian Commonwealth Bank Suspends Testing of Cryptocurrency Trading

Australia’s largest bank, Commonwelath Bank, has suspended a pilot project to add cryptocurrency trading to its mobile app due to the market crash and instability.

The Australian financial giant announced its intention to add the ability to trade cryptocurrencies in its application back in November last year. Then it was planned to support ten assets, including BTC, ETH and LTC. A limited number of clients have gained access to the trade, with a larger rollout planned for this year. However, according to publications of The Guardian, at the moment the project has gone “under the cloth”.

So far, there is no information about the possibility of resuming trading in cryptocurrencies. Customers who participated in the pilot also lost access to this feature. As Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn said, “Following customer feedback, we realized that this sector needs more regulation.”

“Following the events of last week, it became clear that this is a very unstable and volatile sector, which is of great interest. At the same time, we see interest in it from both regulators and people who develop best practices for regulating the industry,” said the CEO of Commonwealth Bank.

Comyn also stressed that the Australian Treasury is currently consulting on regulation of the industry, and all proposals must be submitted by May 27. The bank is going to continue the pilot project, but “there are a couple of things that need to be worked out by the regulatory documentation.”

Speaking of the “events of the past week,” Komyn was naturally referring to the fall of the Terra ecosystem. Recently Bits.Media published a large-scale material covering all the details of the incident.