Australia has a population of only 26 million, but OKX is betting that if policymakers act fast enough, the country could become one of the most important digital financial markets in the developed world.
A new report backed by the exchange estimates Australia could reap A$24 billion ($17 billion) in annual economic benefits from tokenized markets, payments and assets if lawmakers modernize licensing and market infrastructure rules.
Research by the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center believes that digital financial innovation can bring benefits equivalent to about 1% of GDP, which is mainly driven by more efficient foreign exchange, capital markets and cross-border payments.
However, under the current regulatory trajectory, Australia is expected to capture only A$1 billion of this potential by 2030, missing out on the vast majority of the so-called digital financial dividends. The gap between A$24 billion and A$1 billion forms the core of the industry’s lobbying efforts to government.
“This is particularly important in Australia because productivity is the No. 1 issue the Australian government is trying to track,” OKX Australia CEO Kate Cooper told CoinDesk, noting that national productivity growth has been essentially flat over the past decade.
Cooper said the ideas in the report came from policymakers repeatedly seeking data to quantify the impact of cryptocurrencies on the Australian economy.
OKX’s focus on Australia may seem counterintuitive as many exchanges prioritize the US – rival exchange Gemini recently left the country as well as the UK and EU – but Cooper believes the country offers a different kind of advantage.
“We have a broad strategy focused on what we call strategic markets, which are markets where there is a competitive advantage to entering the onshore market,” Cooper said.
The strategy relies on regulation as a moat. In a market like Australia, where licensing standards are strict and compliance costs are high, onshore operations can create a defensive position that cannot be easily replicated by only offshore platforms.
For OKX, this means investing in local approvals and infrastructure to accommodate institutional flows, especially as tokenized bonds, stablecoins, and digital market infrastructure scale.
Cooper explains that in a country with one of the largest pension capital pools in the world, being regulated and integrated locally is not about retail volume, but long-term access to concentrated capital.
If lawmakers enact appropriate legislation, this funding could help propel Australia into an accelerated phase of digital finance adoption.
If not, Australia risks falling into what Cooper calls a “proof-of-concept death spiral”, capturing only a fraction of the modeled A$24 billion opportunity while the industry and its capital flows overseas.
