Matt Comyn News

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has put its plans for a second pilot program of crypto trading services on hold indefinitely and cut off access to those in the first round of testing.

A pilot programme was initiated that provided access to up to ten selected crypto assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.However, with the crypto markets in turmoil, the rollout has been suspended, with no time set on when it will resume.In a tech briefing to investors, CEO Matt Comyn says: “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.“Our intention still, at this stage is to restart the pilot, but there is still a couple of things that we want to work through on a regulatory front to make sure that that is most appropriate.”The Australian federal Treasury is currently consulting on regulation around cryptocurrency, with submissions open until 27 May.

Matt Comyn, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), said that the bank is more concerned about the risks of missing out on crypto than those associated with its adoption.

The pilot will start in the coming weeks and will provide customers with access to up to ten selected crypto assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.Research from CBA has found a large number of its customers want to access crypto assets as an investment class and are already buying, selling and holding crypto assets through a variety of crypto exchanges.CBA CEO Matt Comyn says: “The emergence and growing demand for digital currencies from customers creates both challenges