UPDATED: AUSTRALIA’S DRAFT CRYPTO CUSTODY RULES LET PLATFORMS POOL CLIENT COINS IN ONE WALLET — ASIC SAYS KEY MANAGEMENT RULES WOULD NOT FIT ITS “PRINCIPLES-BASED” APPROACH — COMMENTS CLOSE NOVEMBER 27

Australia’s securities regulator, ASIC, published draft custody rules for crypto platforms on October 15, 2026. They sit in Attachment 2 to Consultation Paper 392, which ASIC calls asset-holding standards. Comments close November 27, 2026. Per CoinDesk, the new law takes effect April 8, 2027, and existing platforms have until October 7, 2027 to apply for a licence.

Section 16 starts well. Each client’s coins must be held separately from the platform’s own property and from other clients’ assets. Then section 16(5) carves the exception: a platform may hold coins for different people at the same address or in the same wallet, as long as its records say whose coins are whose. That is a pooled wallet. Your bitcoin becomes a line in their ledger.

Search the draft for cold storage, offline or key management and you find nothing. The words private key appear once, in a note under section 20 saying the records and reports sent to ASIC do not need to include one. On withdrawals, section 18 says the platform “must take reasonable steps to facilitate” your right to take delivery, and a delay or suspension may last for “no longer than is reasonably necessary.” Lending your coins out needs your express consent under section 19. ASIC says the drafts are preliminary and may change a lot before they are final.

UPDATE: The silence is a choice. Paragraph 66 of the consultation paper says hot and cold wallet splits and “detailed key management processes” would be “inconsistent with our principles-based and technology-neutral approach.” ASIC points to Section F of RG 133, its existing custody guidance, which is good practice, not a rule. Paragraph 67 says ASIC won’t require Australians’ coins to be held in Australia. Paragraph 69 asks whether the local operator should get emergency access to private keys if an overseas parent company fails.

The draft writes down who owes you bitcoin. It does not say who holds the keys, or how. A coin is yours when you can move it on demand, and section 18 still leaves room for a pause the platform calls reasonable. Until Australia’s rule says how keys are held, the only custody rule that settles it is your own. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $80,303.