Last November, in a major vote of confidence in crypto-assets, the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) announced it would allow its customers to hold and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through its 6.5 million-user banking app.

“We believe we can play an important role in crypto to meet what is clearly a growing customer need and provide opportunity, security and confidence in a crypto trading platform,” said CBA CEO Matt Comyn on this time.

“In looking for ways we can support our customers, we have made the strategic decision to form an exclusive partnership in Australia with Gemini, a global leader with strong security and experience serving large institutions,” he added.

However, at the bank’s technical briefing last week, Mr Comyn confirmed that CBA had suspended testing amid the global crypto market slump and regulatory uncertainty.

The chief executive noted that after the first stage of the pilot project, the bank received “some feedback” from customers, which it is currently working on.

“We are also working closely with a number of regulators, as you can imagine, on the appropriate treatment of this particular product,” Mr Comyn said.

“As the events of the last week have picked up, it’s clearly a very volatile sector that remains of huge interest. But along with that volatility and awareness and I guess scale, certainly globally, you can see there’s a lot of interest from regulators and people thinking about the best way to regulate this.”

The federal government is consulting on cryptocurrency regulation, with submissions due to conclude at the end of this week. Speaking at the technical briefing, Mr Comyn suggested that “it will be the focus of the future government to think about how best to regulate the sector”.

“And we want to continue to play a leading role in providing input into that and shaping the most appropriate regulatory outcome.”

“Our intention is still, at this stage, to restart the pilot, but there are still a few things we want to work out on the regulatory front to make sure it’s the best fit,” he said.

Last year, CBA’s move was seen as a clever ploy to help the big four appeal to young customers and keep pace with rivals such as Square and PayPal, which already allow users to trade and spend bitcoins.

“CBA’s move is exciting and inevitable,” BTC Markets CEO Caroline Bowler said at the time.

“It’s another ‘red letter day’ for cryptocurrency and Australia seems to have suddenly relinquished the lead.

“All this time we’ve been touted as a laggard, but now we’re moving into a global leadership position with our largest bank and one of the world’s most significant mainstream financial institutions offering millions of customers access to cryptocurrencies.”

Maja Garatsa Djurdjevic

Maya’s career in journalism spans more than a decade in finance, business and politics. Already an experienced editor and reporter in all elements of the financial services sector, before joining Momentum Media, Maya reported for several established news outlets in South East Europe, looking at key processes in post-conflict societies.