Australia’s 40-year outlook names AI, omits crypto

The Australian Treasury published its Intergenerational Report on Monday, naming agentic artificial intelligence as one of five major transitions likely to shape the economy over the next 40 years. The report states agentic AI systems have become “significantly” more capable, autonomous and widely used, and exceed human-level performance on some benchmarks.

The document lists geopolitical conflict, an aging population, a shift to clean energy and an industrial move toward services as the other major transitions. Treasury says long-term prosperity will depend on adopting new technology and lifting productivity.

The report contains no discussion of digital assets or tokenized finance. Previous editions of the Intergenerational Report also did not address digital assets.

Other Australian authorities have taken actions on digital finance this year. The Reserve Bank of Australia has increased its work on tokenized finance and financial infrastructure upgrades, and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre estimated digital finance innovations could generate about 24 billion Australian dollars in annual economic gains.

Treasury published a separate Financial Innovation Strategy on Sept. 3 that links AI to financial infrastructure. That strategy warns agentic systems could raise the number of automated machine-to-machine transactions and increase demand for real-time, interoperable and programmable payments. It recommends work on payment systems able to handle higher volumes and more complex automated flows.

John O’Loghlen, country director at Coinbase Australia, wrote in emailed comments that the Intergenerational Report stresses the need to adopt new technology and lift productivity but does not address the payments and market infrastructure required for what he described as “agentic finance.” He noted the Digital Asset Platform framework has provided regulatory clarity and called for clear rules on tokenized stored-value facilities for stablecoins and frameworks for tokenized markets, which he said would provide the infrastructure for digital finance to operate.

The Intergenerational Report places AI alongside demographic and geopolitical trends, while work on tokenization and programmable payments proceeds through separate regulatory and policy channels.