Report contents
APAC · Established
Australia
Crypto Livability Index 2025·data to 31 Dec 2025
Scoreboard
Five pillars, then the 22 sub-pillars scored 0 to 4. Empty sub-scores are held out of the total, not zeroed.
The number behind the rank
| Raw capability score | 70 / 84 |
| P2P liquidity bonus (tie-breaker) | +1 |
| Inflation 3.9% · unbanked 2% · remittances 0.1% GDP · capital controls 0 · sanctions 0 | CNI 0.020 |
| Need multiplier | ×0.531 |
| Livability score | 0.442 |
Raw 70/84 = 0.833 capability. Crypto-Necessity Index 0.02, from five components: inflation 3.9% (three-year average 2023 to 2025), unbanked 2% of adults, remittances 0.1% of GDP, capital-control intensity 0.00 (KAOPEN 2023), sanctions exposure 0. Need multiplier ×0.53. Livability score 0.442, rank #35 of 79.
Three findings
The largest livability fall in the region: minus 31 places
Australia ranks #4 in the world on raw capability with 70/84, behind only the very top, yet drops to #35 once need is applied. The Crypto-Necessity Index is 0.02: inflation averaged 3.9%, only 2% of adults are unbanked, and remittances are 0.1% of GDP against a net six-to-one outbound flow. This is the textbook case of a mature market that built everything and needs almost none of it.
A perfect spending score, with every utility bill payable in crypto
Australia posts 20/20 on spending, including all six utility categories, because Living Room of Satoshi operates under its own financial-services licence and routes Bitcoin, Lightning and stablecoins to any of 45,000-plus billers and any Australian bank account. The country also runs 1,929 crypto ATMs across its three largest metros, one of the densest networks measured.
The friction is at the bank, not the exchange
Exchange onboarding is conventional 100-point ID, but three of the Big Four banks enforce a 10,000 dollar monthly cap on payments to crypto exchanges, and Westpac blocks some venues outright. Roughly 19.3% of Australians report a bank delaying or blocking a crypto-exchange transfer, the structural reason the regulation score sits below the spending and access scores.
In one line
"Australia is one of the most complete places on Earth to live on crypto, down to paying every utility bill. It just happens to be a country where almost nobody has to."
Watch in 2026
Trajectory 3/4, trending liberalising. Treasury released exposure-draft legislation for digital-asset platform custody on 25 September 2025, and the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 was introduced to Parliament on 26 November 2025, alongside a parallel payments-modernisation draft covering tokenised stored-value facilities. If the Bill passes in early 2026, the trajectory moves to 4.