Crypto City guide to Sydney: More than just a ‘token’ bridge
A “full-on” crypto scene and “heaps” of Web3 projects in Australia’s largest city show Sydney has more to offer than beaches and a bridge.
This Crypto City guide looks at Sydneys crypto culture, the citys most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, what retailers accept crypto and where you can find blockchain education courses along with a history of its crypto controversies.
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Sydney’s crypto culture
Sydney saw an early interest in cryptocurrencies that still carries on today. Blockchain Sydney has been consistently getting together since 2013, and it currently meets twice a month at various pubs around the city. Blockchain Professionals, formed in 2014, also still meets up about once a month.
The Australian DeFi Association, while only launching in early 2022, has become a highly attended and consistent monthly hangout for local crypto industry players and enthusiasts.
Co-founder Mark Monfort originally created it for online discussions but says it soon morphed into an IRL meetup held between the larger one-off blockchain events, such as those by Blockchain Australia.
We wanted to be the gap filler between other meetups because what we saw was that there wasnt really a place for direct conversation apart from Crypto Twitter.
Of those still around that accept crypto, you can grab a brew at Cat and Cow Coffee in Clovelly. The aptly named Bitcoin Rocket Cafe in Redfern takes Bitcoin over the Lightning Network for its coffees and Bnh ms. The cafes owner, Samantha Ho, said she charges a higher fee for those spending under $13 (20 AUD) when paying by Lightning and estimated around five in 100 customers actually pay using Bitcoin.
There are a variety of stores that accept crypto when ordering online. You can order a new skateboard from Boardworld, which has shops in the inner west suburbs of Newtown and St Peters. Retro Girl will accept Bitcoin for their vintage wares, or you can grab some (very expensive) lingerie at Babylikestopony, which also has a shop in Paddington.
Under the bridge is Bar Lulu, which operates CryptoLulu, an NFT-gated membership club that claims to offer private lounges, networking events and other benefits at the venue for NFT holders. While you can of course pay for the NFT membership using crypto, the bar itself doesnt take crypto payments right, now but thats apparently coming soon.
Controversies and collapses
For many years, there was much excitement about the ASX implementing a blockchain-backed solution for its clearing and settlements system. It first announced the plans in 2017, but it suffered multiple delays. Five years on and $170 million later, the ASX canned the project in late 2022 to much scorn from the central bank and the securities regulator.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has undertaken its share of enforcement actions in the crypto space against Sydney businesses. It sued Block Earner in November 2022, claiming the latter offered crypto-based yield products without a license. ASIC hit comparison website Finder with a similar suit a month later, and the regulator claims Finder shut down its crypto-yielding products a month earlier because of its concerns.
In April 2022 after a targeted review, ASIC canceled the financial license of Binance Australia Derivatives (Oztures Trading), the futures business of the exchange. ASIC also claims it was sniffing out the Sydney-headquartered Australian entity for FTX months before the global company collapsed in November 2022. FTX Australia was able to gain a local financial license by taking over a company that already had one, a loophole that ASIC chair Joe Longo wants to close.
Holon was similarly whacked by ASIC in October 2022, which put a stop to crypto ETFs investing in Bitcoin, Ether and Filecoin. Holon later bailed on the idea altogether.
In late 2020, ASIC also unleashed a raft of charges against John Biggaton, a promotor of the infamous BitConnect Ponzi scheme. Conspiracy theories about Biggaton have been spun up after his wife, Madeline Bigatton, mysteriously disappeared in March 2018. She was suspected to have committed suicide at The Gap, a location infamous for such acts, but its a narrative that her family doubts.
Sydneysider Kathryn Nguyen is widely believed to be the first person charged with the theft of crypto assets in Australia. She was sentenced to two years in jail after stealing around 100,000 XRP in January 2018. The alleged Sydney-based Ponzi scheme Metafi Yielders is said to have stolen $135 million, but after it collapsed, the chief executive of the business, Michael Daher, claimed he was just a fall guy, and the real schemers were in Nigeria.
The Commonwealth Bank has seemingly done a 180 on its crypto stance in a relatively short time. In November 2021, it was gearing up to ship crypto trading within its banking app. At the time, its CEO, Matt Comyn, said the bank saw bigger risks in not participating in crypto and, in May 2022, was still seemingly trying to squeeze the product past regulators. But just over a year and a half later, the bank began censoring payments to crypto exchanges.
The controversial Satoshi claimant Craig Wright used to live in Sydney, and his house was notoriously raided by federal police in 2015 due to a warrant issued by the tax authorities, but he now lives in the United Kingdom.
Crypto education in Sydney
A few higher-ed institutions offer courses or units of study on blockchain and Web3. Sydneys first university, the University of Sydney, offers a unit on Cryptocurrency Markets and Investments. It also does a course on blockchains and cryptography as part of its Master of Cybersecurity.
Sydney Uni along with the CSIRO (a federal government scientific research agency) developed the Redbelly blockchain, which aimed to create a fork-proof network. The project was spun out of the uni into its own commercial entity in December 2021.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) offers a free two-hour online course on the basics of blockchain tech, while the University of New South Wales (UNSW) offers postgraduate and undergraduate courses on Web3 and Blockchain Applications. UNSWs course on cryptocurrency and DeFi is a core course as part of its postgraduate major in fintech.
For those willing to pay $235 (350 AUD) to sit in a classroom for nine hours to learn the basics of crypto, blockchain and how to trade, then the Sydney Community College has a course aimed at introducing you to crypto and blockchain although this carries no accreditations like the others.
UNSW and Sydney Uni have a student-led society that semi-regularly hosts events and meetups called the University Network for Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.
In May 2022, UNSW received $4 million worth of USDC from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for the development of a pandemic-detection tool.
Notable figures
Synthetix founder Kain Warwick; Illuvium co-founders (and Kains brothers) Aaron and Kieran Warwick; Finder co-founder and Crypto Castle owner Fred Schebesta; Block Earner co-founder Charlie Karaboga; Australian DeFi Association co-founders Mark Monfort and Arturo Rodriguez; Kraken Australia managing director Jonathon Miller; Web3 blogger Joan Westenberg; KPMG director of metaverse Alyse Sue; StepN creator Jerry Huang; Algorand Foundation governance manager Adriana Belotti; Haymarket HQ CEO Duco Van Breeman; Immutable co-founders Robbie and James Ferguson, Independent Reserve co-founder Adrian Przelozny ; Virtually Human co-founder and Zed Run creator Chris Laurent; Global X ETFs AU CEO Evan Metcalf; Block8 co-founders Kim Bartlett, Alan Burt and Tim Bass; CryptoRecruit founder Neil Dundon; Koinly head of tax Danny Talwar; Coinbase APAC managing director John OLoghlen; Arkon Energy co-founder and CEO Joshua Payne; Smart Token Labs co-founder and CEO Victor Zhang; Holon co-founder Heath Behncke; Crypto lawyers Nick Abrahams and Michael Bacina (the latter is also the Blockchain Australia chairperson), Ethereum Smart Contract developer and community educator Bokky Poobah.
Cointelegraph team members and contributors based in Sydney: Felix Ng, Brayden Lindrea, Ciaran Lyons and Jesse Coghlan.
If you have suggestions for additions to this guide, please email: jesse.coghlan@cointelegraph.com.
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Author: Jesse Coghlan
