Australia’s new 40-year economic outlook identifies artificial intelligence as one of five major transitions set to reshape the economy, but it does not mention crypto.
The latest Intergenerational Report, published Monday by the Australian Treasury, says agentic AI systems have become “significantly” more capable, autonomous and widely used, surpassing human-level performance on some benchmarks. The other major transitions listed in the report are geopolitical conflicts, an aging population, the shift to clean energy and Australia’s industrial move toward services.
Coinbase says the report misses the infrastructure AI agents may need
In emailed comments, Coinbase Australia country director John O’Loghlen said: “The Intergenerational Report makes it clear that Australia’s prosperity over the next 40 years will depend heavily on our ability to adopt new technology and lift productivity.”
He added: “And while the report focuses heavily on artificial intelligence, it completely misses the financial infrastructure those agents will need.”
Digital assets were also absent from earlier Intergenerational Reports
Previous Intergenerational Reports also did not address digital assets. This latest omission comes even as the Reserve Bank of Australia has increased its focus on tokenized finance and financial infrastructure upgrades earlier this year. The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre has also estimated that digital finance innovation could generate 24 billion Australian dollars, or $17.1 billion, in annual economic gains.
A separate Treasury report did address AI and payments infrastructure
Even though the Intergenerational Report left crypto out, Treasury’s separate “Financial Innovation Strategy,” released on Sept. 3, does discuss the connection between AI and financial infrastructure.
That report says agentic systems could increase automated transactions and machine-to-machine transactions, creating greater demand for real-time, interoperable and programmable payment systems.
“We’ve made good progress in recent years, including through the Digital Asset Platform framework, which has provided necessary regulatory clarity,” O’Loghlen said.
He added: “The opportunity now is to bring the same focus to the tokenized stored-value facility framework for stablecoins, and clear rules for tokenized markets. Those are the rails digital finance — agentic finance included — will run on and getting them right is how Australia turns this opportunity into reality.”