CBA has stated that it would postpone the launch of cryptocurrency trading via the official app due to the current market’s instability.
According to the official statement, on May 19, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) paused the deployment of the second pilot program of cryptocurrency exchange services. As of now, it is still unclear when the crypto trading trial will resume.
Despite the fact that the company has been on a determined path to improve its services, further regulation is required before moving forward, the CEO of CBA Matt Comyn announced.
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During a tech briefing, Comyn additionally stated:
“As events of the last week have reinforced, it is clearly a very volatile sector that remains an enormous amount of interest. But alongside that volatility and awareness and I guess the scale, certainly globally, you can see there is a lot of interest from regulators and people thinking about the best way to regulate that.”
The largest bank in Australia plans to allow its customers to purchase up to 10 cryptocurrency assets, including BTC, ETH, and LTC.
Matt Comyn expanded on the upcoming plans and stated:
“Our intention still, at this stage, is to restart the pilot, but there are still a couple of things that we want to work through on a regulatory front to make sure that that is most appropriate.”
Dr. Dimitrios Salampasis, a leadership and entrepreneurship lecturer at the Swinburne University of Technology, stated that the Australian bank is acting cautiously to avoid possible reputational damage due to associations with crypto. Salampasis added that the Australian bank would continue to work on maintaining the first-mover advantage.
The CEO also implied that the company’s objective still remains to continue the pilot after ironing out a few aspects on the regulatory front to ensure that this is the best option. “We want to continue to play a leading role in providing input into that and shaping the most appropriate regulatory outcome,” he added.
Last year, CBA provided its customers with a feature of selling and buying crypto through its official application.
Currently, crypto is significantly suffering as the most prominent cryptocurrencies lost between 15% and 20% of their value. For instance, as of now, TerraUSD is valued at $0.08 per UST & USD. TerraUSD is 92% below the all-time high of $1.05.
On May 18, The US Congressional Research Agency commented on the situation of the UST stablecoin and emphasized that it has regulatory liabilities.
