The Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) has reportedly thrown its weight behind the “crypto rule book” idea, along with urges for exchanges regulations rather than crypto assets.

Specifically, In May, the Australian Law Reform Council (ALRC) reportedly put up the proposal to handle crypto regulation via a rule book-style framework, which sets out an array of gradually updated compliance principles devoted to local crypto establishments to abide by.

The remarks reportedly surfaced through a submission to the Treasury by FPA’s head of policy, strategy, and innovation, Ben Marshan, who also believed that the regulation of crypto exchanges should be within the existing financial services regime, and not under a new separate legal framework.

“Firstly, it would create an alternate, duplicate regulatory regime to regulate what, at the core, is the purchase and holding of a financial asset to either retail or wholesale investors. Secondly, it would require existing financial service licensees to apply for and hold a separate type of license, adding to cost and regulatory duplication,” he further remarked.

Mashan additionally highlighted a necessity to introduce consumer protections at a greater scale for local Australia-based crypto users and emphasized that regulating secondary providers (crypto exchanges, brokers, etc.) is the most appropriate approach to carry this out.

“The regulation of a financial product or service should not depend on the technology, which underlies the asset. It would be virtually impossible to regulate the product because it’s so decentralized, they’re in all sorts of foreign jurisdictions.”

Having regulation concentrating on crypto service providers will eliminate a substantial amount of “complexity” from the equation, taking into account the rapidly evolving nature of blockchain tech and crypto, per Mashan, adding that the ALRC’s crypto rule book idea for firms to follow “makes sense.”

“It makes it a lot easier because instead of having to work your way through thousands of pages of the Corporations Act, people can go to a specific section, and it’s much more efficient.”