The Australian authorities, or allow to precise, the financial institutions – the banks – have voiced their opinion on bitcoin and its use. Similar to the spokespeople for China, North America and several European Union countries the attitude cannot be interpreted in a single way – it has some surprising doubts that can be cleared and very logical bothers that might bring bitcoin to a new level of social appeal.

Observing the Australian financial can be concluded that some banks have united to work on the bitcoin system to get an understanding, develop an attitude and maybe even start supporting the crypto currency, the rest still is issuing warnings and even blame its users for many economic crimes. It does not provide more stability to the network, where already many merchants are engaged – exchange should be processed, ATM’s, payments and other actions.

Speaking in general all the comments and statements can be grouped by three main principles:

  • Bitcoin seems interesting and promising – it is necessary to collect more information on it.
  • Bitcoin does not exist and it should not be discussed as some imaginary matter.
  • Bitcoin is at fault for many affairs and crimes. It should be investigated or even punished.

None of the points promises full support and caring. As the Australian banking market can be reduced to four main players (smaller institutions on some level go under the wing of a bigger competitor to be able to continue the work): Commonwealth Bank of Australia or CBA, National Australia Bank (NAB), the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and Westpac.

The Commonwealth Banks is against bitcoin, it is somewhere between the second and first position. There are already examples when accounts of private users and companies having huge bitcoin funds suffered from terminated accounts. The most recent accident – CoinJar and its founders (our platform has already written about them).

On the opposite the National Bank of Australia is very friendly towards the virtual coin and its users. The founders of CoinJar together with their business were able to open new accounts at the bank and got all the necessary support. It was even the bank’s initiative to give the hand of help.

The ANZ bank is bifacial. The attitudes towards different customers are not the same. Some accounts get closed down, but others receive support to battle against frauds. Chris Cameron suffered from such impolite activities being a premium client of the institution.

The Westpac cannot be describes from the bitcoin point of view. There is particularly lack of information. Representatives who have been asked on their position were surprised and had no clue what crypto currency is.

More on Australia’s bitcoin policy was acquired by Stephen Rowlison, who wanted to start a bitcoin ATM and point-of-sale network. He went to APCA – the Australian Payments Clearing Association to get some advice. Their statement was very short and unclear: “New digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, may [...] reshape the payments landscape.”

Such attitude of the most important financial organization of the country do not need to prohibit bitcoin use – to stop the progress and development, to shy away investors and developers is enough to keep quiet, give full of doubt comments that cannot be interpreted in a single way. It means that the troglodytes to be research can be found not in the jungles, but in comfortable chairs of directors’, CEO’s and top-managers’.