Australia has 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 act fast enough.
A new bourse-backed report estimates Australia could unlock A$24 billion ($17 billion) in annual economic gains from marketplaces, payments and tokenized assets, provided lawmakers modernize licensing and market infrastructure rules.
The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center study claims that innovation in digital finance could generate gains equivalent to around 1% of GDP, largely through more efficient foreign exchange, capital markets and cross-border payments.
Yet under 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 is at the heart of the industry’s pitch to the government.
“This is particularly important in Australia, where productivity is the No. 1 issue that the government is trying to track,” Kate Cooper, CEO of OKX Australia, told CoinDesk in an interview, noting that national productivity growth has remained largely stable over the past decade.
Cooper said the idea for the report came from policymakers repeatedly seeking data quantifying the impact of crypto on the Australian economy.
OKX’s focus on Australia may seem counterintuitive at a time when many exchanges are prioritizing the United States – rival exchange Gemini recently left the country, along with the United Kingdom and the European Union – but Cooper says the country offers a different kind of advantage.
“We have an overall strategy focused on what we call strategic markets, which are markets where there is a competitive advantage to entering the domestic market,” Cooper said.
The strategy relies on regulation as a moat. In markets like Australia, where licensing standards are strict and compliance costs high, onshore operations can create a defensible position that offshore-only platforms cannot easily replicate.
For OKX, this means investing in local approvals and infrastructure to position itself for institutional flows, particularly in the form of tokenized bonds, stablecoins and digital market infrastructure.
In a country with one of the largest pools of retirement capital in the world, Cooper explained, being locally regulated and integrated depends less on retail trading volume than on long-term access to concentrated capital.
If lawmakers pass appropriate legislation, this capital could help push Australia into the accelerated phase of digital finance adoption.
Otherwise, Australia risks remaining in what Cooper describes as the “proof-of-concept death spiral”, capturing only a fraction of the modeled A$24 billion opportunity while the industry – and its capital – flows offshore.
