According to Reuters, thousands of Australians who invested their retirement savings in crypto assets faced losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
We are talking about participants in self-managed pension funds (SMSF), which are outside the competence of Australian prudential regulators and allow them to independently make investment decisions within the limits of pension savings. In Australia, SMSF funds can be used to take out loans to buy houses and farms, buy shares in private companies or collectibles such as wine and jewelry.
SMSF pension funds, or do-it-yourself (DIY) funds as they are also called, account for a quarter of all Australian pension funds, totaling more than $2.29 trillion. Amid the pandemic, rising inflation and falling returns on traditional financial instruments, thousands of DIY fund members have begun to actively invest their retirement money in alternative instruments, including cryptocurrencies, according to Reuters.
According to the Australian Revenue Authority (ATO), retirees have invested at least A$1.4 billion ($945 million) in crypto assets. The tax service does not provide information about the losses of the cryptocurrency portfolio of DIY pensioners. However, using a 40% drop in the price of major crypto assets as a benchmark, Reuters calculates that the value of SMSF’s cryptocurrency investment has fallen by around A$700 million.
Recently, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) , together with the Corporate Digital Finance Research Center (DFCRC), announced the launch of a pilot project to explore options for using the state stablecoin eAUD.
