Australia is home to just 26 million people, but OKX is betting the country could become one of the most important digital financial markets in the developed world if policymakers move quickly enough.
A new report backed by the exchange estimates Australia could unlock A$24 billion ($17 billion) in annual economic gains from tokenized markets, payments and assets, provided lawmakers modernize licensing and market infrastructure rules.
The study by the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center argues that digital finance innovation can deliver gains equivalent to around 1% of GDP, mainly driven by more efficient currency, capital markets and cross-border payments.
Yet on its 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 finance dividend. The gap between A$24 billion and A$1 billion forms the core of the industry’s pitch to the government.
“It’s especially important in Australia, where productivity is the No. 1 issue that the government is trying to track,” OKX Australia CEO Kate Cooper told CoinDesk in an interview, noting that national productivity growth has been largely flat for the past decade.
Cooper said the idea for the report came from politicians repeatedly seeking data quantifying crypto’s impact on Australia’s economy.
OKX’s focus on Australia may seem counterintuitive at a time when many exchanges are prioritizing the US – rival exchange Gemini recently exited the country, as well as the UK and the EU – but Cooper argues the country offers a different kind of advantage.
“We have a broad strategy that is focused on what we call strategic markets, which are markets where there is a competitive advantage to entering the market onshore,” Cooper said.
The strategy is based on regulation as a moat. In markets such as Australia, where licensing standards are strict and compliance costs are high, onshore operations can create a defensible position that only offshore platforms cannot easily replicate.
For OKX, that means investing in local approvals and infrastructure to position itself for institutional flows, especially like tokenized bonds, stablecoins and digital market infrastructure.
In a country with one of the world’s largest pension capital pools, Cooper explained, being regulated and embedded locally is less about retail volume and more about long-term access to concentrated capital.
If lawmakers pass appropriate legislation, this capital could help push Australia into the acceleration phase of digital finance adoption.
If not, Australia risks remaining in what Cooper describes as the “proof-of-concept death spiral”, capturing just a fraction of the modeled A$24 billion opportunity as the industry – and its capital – floats offshore.
