Australia’s government has identified artificial intelligence (AI) as a key driver that will reshape the economy over the next 40 years, but excluded cryptocurrencies and digital assets from its long-term economic outlook.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Monday that the Australian Treasury’s latest Intergenerational Report released that day listed AI as one of five major shifts expected to have a significant impact on the future economy.

The Treasury assessed that agentic AI systems have advanced sharply in performance, autonomy and range of use, and have surpassed human-level capabilities by some measures. It listed the other four transformation factors as geopolitical conflict, ageing, the clean energy transition and a shift toward service-based industries.

The report did not mention cryptocurrencies or digital assets. Earlier Intergenerational Reports also did not address digital assets, but the gap stands out more as the Reserve Bank of Australia has put greater weight this year on tokenised finance and upgrading financial infrastructure. The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFRC) has previously estimated that digital finance innovation could deliver A$24 billion ($15.4 billion) in annual economic benefits.

John O’Loghlen (존 오로그렌), who leads Coinbase Australia, said the government report clearly underscored the importance of productivity and technology adoption. He said it omitted the financial infrastructure on which AI would operate. “Australia’s prosperity over the next 40 years depends on its ability to adopt new technologies and lift productivity,” he said. “The report completely missed the financial infrastructure that agents will need,” he said.

The point also links to the fact that other Australian government documents already address the potential combination of AI and payments infrastructure. The Treasury’s “Financial Innovation Strategy” released on Sept. 3 said agentic systems could boost automated and machine-to-machine transactions, increasing demand for real-time, interoperable and programmable payment systems.

Market and industry attention is shifting from AI itself to the foundations that would allow AI to carry out real transactions. O’Loghlen said regulatory clarity has been established in recent years through a digital asset platform framework. He pointed to a tokenised stored-value facility framework for stablecoins and clear rules for tokenised markets as the next tasks.

The report shows the Australian government is raising the weight of AI in its long-term growth strategy, while still addressing how digital assets fit into financial infrastructure through separate policy documents. That makes it a key point of focus in future policy debate whether stablecoins, tokenised markets and real-time payments systems will be connected as a single digital finance infrastructure alongside efforts to strengthen AI competitiveness.