Equity Mates · Nov 5, 2026 · 25m · 17m saved
With Adam Judd, Chief Operating Officer of Coinbase Australia
Coinbase custodies five of the six Bitcoin ETFs listed in Australia and nine of the 12 in the US. Adam Judd, chief operating officer of Coinbase Australia, told a FinFest 2026 audience, in a keynote released on Equity Mates, that crypto is not replacing the financial system but merging with it, and that most of the old system works well.
"If you were asked to redesign the financial system from scratch today, knowing the technology that we have available now, would you build it the same way? Actually, most of it's pretty good." — Adam Judd
Adam has worked on three sides of Australian finance: at the regulator ASIC, at the retail broker CommSec and now at a crypto platform.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 25 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 11 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
One in three Australians have owned a digital currency, and 90% know what Bitcoin is
A stablecoin transfer on Coinbase costs five basis points and arrives almost instantly
Over 75% of Bitcoin value is custodied with Coinbase, whether held directly or through an ETF
Coinbase plans to bring tokenized equities to Australia within a year
ASIC's reforms will put crypto firms under the same rules as traditional finance, but a license alone does not guarantee good service
Owning a tokenized share depends on who issued the token, not on the token itself
1. Most of Finance Works
Bryce Leske and Alec Renehan, the Equity Mates co-founders, introduced the session as one of 43 recorded at FinFest 2026, which they called Australia's largest finance festival. Adam opened with a thought experiment about rebuilding finance from scratch, and answered that most of the current system is sound. The parts worth fixing, in his view, are specific frictions, which new technology can remove the way screen trading replaced paper share certificates.
Adam Judd set out three themes: the user, convergence and trust
"If I can pass on three things that I want you to take out of today's session, it's rethinking how financial services works for the user, the convergence of digital assets and traditional financial services, and the firms that succeed and win are those that earn trust from investors and users." — Adam Judd
