Lawmakers want Australia to recognize bitcoin as official currency

Count bitcoin among the topics that crosses the political divide.

In Australia, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to get the country recognize bitcoin as an official form of currency. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, labor and coalition senators are calling on the Reserve Bank to embrace digital currency “or risk the future of competitiveness of Australia’s A$145 billion a year financial services industry.”

Leading the effort are Liberal Senator Jane Hume and Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, who argued that Australia will be left behind if it decided against having its own official currency and blockchain.

Dastyari told the news outlet that Australia is lagging behind its Asian neighbors in the area of cheap goods and services production, but the country can still compete in the financial services sector.