Australia's 40-Year Economic Outlook Flags AI Revolution, Leaves Out Crypto and Stablecoin Infrastructure
Australia's Treasury names AI among five major transformations reshaping the economy over the next 40 years, but makes no mention of crypto assets or stablecoins—prompting criticism that the financial infrastructure AI agents will need is being overlooked.
Australia's 40-Year Economic Outlook Flags AI Revolution, Leaves Out Crypto and Stablecoin Infrastructure
Australia's Treasury released its latest Intergenerational Report on September 22, 2026, listing artificial intelligence as one of five major transformations set to reshape the country's economy over the next 40 years—yet the document makes no mention of crypto assets or stablecoins.
The report says autonomous AI agent systems have improved "significantly" in capability, autonomy and breadth of use, with some benchmarks surpassing human-level performance. The other four transformations are geopolitical conflict, population aging, the clean energy transition and the shift toward a service-based economy.
John O'Loghlen, Coinbase's Australia country director, said in emailed comments that the report focuses on AI but "completely omits the financial infrastructure these agents will need." Previous intergenerational reports have likewise not addressed digital assets.
Notably, the Reserve Bank of Australia has stepped up its focus on tokenized finance and financial infrastructure upgrades earlier this year, with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre estimating that related innovation could add A$24 billion (about US$17.1 billion) to the economy each year. Treasury's separately released Financial Innovation Strategy on September 3 mentions the link between AI and financial infrastructure, saying agent systems could drive up demand for automation and machine-to-machine transactions, in turn requiring more real-time, interoperable and programmable payment systems.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/australian-40-year-economic-outlook-recognizes-ai-revolution-omits-crypto?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound
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- Byline
- OceanAlt Editorial
- First published
- 2026-09-22
- Last updated
- 2026-09-22
- Content type
- Newsflash
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