Crypto Firms Are Becoming Regulated Companies, and That Changes How They Talk
Australia passed the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill on 1 April 2026, requiring crypto exchanges and custody providers to hold appropriate licences. The framework introduces two new financial products, the digital asset platform and the tokenised custody platform, and gives businesses 18 months to meet the licensing and operational standards, as the Law Society Journal reported.
The compliance work is well understood. The communications consequence is not, and it arrives sooner. A company that becomes a regulated entity has to change how it speaks about itself roughly a year before the licence is granted.
What does the digital assets framework cover?
The framework brings intermediaries in the digital asset market inside the regulatory perimeter by defining two financial products and requiring the businesses that offer them to be licensed. A digital asset platform covers services where a business holds and deals in digital assets for clients. A tokenised custody platform covers custody arrangements over tokenised holdings.
Alongside it, a framework for payment stablecoins is being built under the stored value facility regime. ASIC has already granted an Australian Financial Services Licence to an Australian stablecoin issuer and made a first-of-its-kind stablecoin distribution exemption instrument, and Coinbase Australia has received an AFSL with retail derivatives authorisation ahead of the incoming regime.
Payment system definitions have widened in parallel, capturing digital wallets, buy now pay later providers, and stablecoin-based platforms as participants.
Why does regulation change the communications programme?
Three reasons, all of them practical.
Claims become regulated statements. A licensed entity making a statement about returns, security, or the nature of a product is making it under a regime with an enforcement arm. Language that was marketing copy in 2024 becomes a compliance exposure in 2027.
The audience changes. An unlicensed exchange markets to retail users who found it through social channels. A licensed platform sells to institutional counterparties, corporate treasurers, and financial advisers, all of whom read differently and none of whom respond to the tone that built the retail base.
Credibility becomes the product. Once every competitor holds the same licence, the licence stops being a differentiator. What remains is the record: how long the company has operated, who runs it, what it has published, and whether independent sources describe it consistently.
What happens to firms that will not licence?
A share of the market will exit, sell, or move offshore rather than meet the standard, and that produces its own communications problem for everyone else. Every exit generates coverage, and the coverage rarely distinguishes carefully between a firm that failed a standard and the sector it operated in.
Firms that intend to licence should expect to be asked about other people's failures for the next two years. Having a prepared, unemotional answer about what separates a licensed platform from an unlicensed one outperforms any campaign, because it will be requested repeatedly and at short notice.
What should a firm stop saying?
Four categories of language create risk under the new regime.
Return language of any kind, including implied stability, yields, or performance comparisons, unless the statement meets financial promotion requirements.
Security absolutes. Descriptions of a platform as fully secure or impossible to breach age badly and are unenforceable as claims.
Regulatory anticipation. Describing the business as licensed, approved, or regulated before the licence is granted is the fastest available route to a regulator's attention.
Comparative claims about competitors' compliance, which invite both a regulatory question and a legal one.
How early should the language change?
Before the application, not after the licence. A regulator assessing an application reads the applicant's public material, and a company still promising returns on its home page while asserting compliance maturity in its submission has answered a question it was not asked.
Customers need the earlier date too. Language that changes overnight on the day a licence is granted reads as a company that was saying something it knew to be wrong. Language that changed a year earlier reads as a company that got ahead of the regime.
What should a firm start saying?
The licensing period creates an unusual window. For 18 months, the market is sorting companies into those that will hold a licence and those that will exit. Communicating clearly through that window is how a firm ends up in the first group in the eyes of customers and counterparties.
Four things work.
Publish the compliance position plainly. Where the company is in the process, what it has applied for, and when it expects a decision, stated factually and kept updated.
Name the people accountable. A compliance lead, a chief risk officer, or a board member with financial services experience is a credibility signal that institutional buyers look for.
Explain the product in the regulator's vocabulary. Describing a service as a digital asset platform, using the term the legislation uses, aligns the company with the framework and with how journalists and AI engines will search for it.
Take a position on the regime itself. Considered commentary on the framework's design, its timelines, and its gaps positions a spokesperson as a source for the reporters covering the transition.
What does the 18-month window look like?
The licensing period has a communications shape, and the phases carry different risks.
Phase/Communications priority
Months one to four: Retire non-compliant language across the website, app, social channels, and sales collateral. Do this before anyone is looking.
Months five to nine: Publish the compliance position and the accountable people. Begin engaging the journalists covering the transition with commentary rather than announcements.
Months 10 to 14: Build institutional-facing material: counterparty information, risk documentation, and case studies aimed at treasurers and advisers.
Months 15 to 18:Prepare the licence announcement and the accompanying explanation of what changes for customers. Prepare the alternative statement in case the timeline slips.
The last row is the one most firms skip. Licensing timelines move, and a company that has publicly forecast a date needs a prepared, unembarrassed way to address a delay.
Who else is watching?
Three audiences beyond customers and regulators read everything published during a licensing transition.
Banking partners assess whether the firm is a manageable counterparty, and they read public statements as evidence of governance maturity. A firm still using retail hype language while applying for a licence answers that question badly.
Institutional investors and acquirers are watching the same window, because licensing creates a natural consolidation moment. Firms that will not make the standard become acquisition targets, and the public record shapes which category a firm appears to be in.
Employees are the third. Compliance transitions are disruptive internally, and staff who read external statements that contradict what they see internally lose confidence quickly.
How does this play out in the media?
Australian financial journalists have covered digital assets sceptically for good reason, and the licensing regime gives them a new frame. Coverage over the next 18 months will sort firms into the compliant and the departing, and the reporting will lean on public evidence of where each company sits.
Firms that engage early get to shape that sorting. Firms that stay quiet until the licence is granted arrive in the story as a name on a list. The difference is a handful of conversations with the four or five journalists covering the transition, held before the outcome is known.
There is also an institutional audience reading the same coverage. Banks, custodians, and corporate treasurers assessing counterparty risk in digital assets use media coverage as one input among several, and a firm with no public record on the regime looks less prepared than one with a stated position.
What does a credible spokesperson sound like now?
The spokesperson profile that suited an unlicensed exchange rarely suits a licensed one. A founder who built an audience through direct, informal commentary has to add a second register without abandoning the first.
Three adjustments do most of the work. Specific claims replace directional enthusiasm, because a regulated entity is accountable for what it asserts. Risk gets acknowledged openly, since institutional counterparties treat unqualified confidence as inexperience. And the spokesperson learns to answer questions about the regime rather than only about the company, which is what makes them useful to a journalist covering the sector.
Some firms respond by putting a newly hired compliance executive in front of the media instead. That usually reads as a company hiding its founder. The stronger position keeps the founder visible and gives them the vocabulary the new environment requires.
Where a communications partner fits
Third Hemisphere works across fintech and investor relations, where communications and regulatory compliance have to be drafted in the same room. That combination is the point during a licensing transition: the message has to be commercially useful and compliant at the same time, and a programme that optimises for one at the expense of the other fails on both.
The takeaway
Australia's digital assets framework gives crypto exchanges and custody providers 18 months to licence, and the communications shift has to run ahead of the compliance one. That means retiring return and security language now, publishing the compliance position plainly, naming accountable people, and taking a position on the regime while journalists are still deciding who to call. Firms working through the transition can review the agency's fintech communications insights or get in touch.