Adrian Przelozny joins Amy-Rose Goodey on The House is Digital for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolution of digital asset markets, the institutionalisation of the industry, and what comes next as finance becomes increasingly digital.
As Co-founder and CEO of Independent Reserve, Adrian has spent more than a decade building through market cycles, regulatory change and industry consolidation. Since launching Independent Reserve in 2013, the business has expanded internationally, secured licensing in Singapore, and in 2026 became part of IG Group.
The discussion explores what maturity actually looks like in digital assets, and whether the industry has now moved beyond experimentation into becoming critical financial infrastructure. Adrian shares his perspective on consolidation across exchanges and infrastructure providers, the growing role of compliance and governance, and why trust has become a central part of operating architecture in digital markets.
The episode also examines Australia’s evolving regulatory framework, the relationship between digital asset businesses and traditional banking systems, and how stablecoins, tokenised deposits and institutional participation may reshape financial markets over the coming decade.
We also discussed The People’s Money – Bitcoin by Adam Tepper. The book can be found here: The People’s Money – Bitcoin.
You can find Adrian’s first interview on the Independent Reserve Podcast here.
Throughout the conversation, there is a strong focus on long-term thinking, operational resilience and the importance of building businesses designed to endure beyond price cycles and market hype.
This episode was recorded at the Independent Reserve podcast studio. Many episodes of The House is Digital are recorded from their studio, and we greatly appreciate their ongoing support of the House is Digital Podcast.
speaker-1: Good. Joining me in my house.
speaker-0: Um, live on YouTube, I think there’s what 500 or so episodes, 600, 600, already. Yeah. So we’re, following, um, your lead here, taking a leaf out of your book. want to talk about Adrian pre and independent reserve and Adrian now. So can you take, because for anyone who’s watching, we’ll link in this episode, Adrian’s interview on. the independent reserve podcast. So you can have a bit of insight into your story. But I was talking to Jared about how fascinating it is remembering where you were in 2013 or so and where you are now, like 13 years later and every year you celebrate a birthday and they get bigger and bigger. But I want to know where you were just before independent reserve.
speaker-1: Where was I? ⁓ I was running an IT consultancy company with my best friend. We were doing some work over at Channel 9. We built a broadcast management system that puts things on TV and that kind of stuff. Um, and probably like early 2013, uh, my friend Adam introduced me to the concept of crypto. said he should look at, he should maybe, you know, do some reading about crypto. You should read about Bitcoin. Maybe you should invest into Bitcoin. I began reading about it. Um, I wanted to, to learn, you is it actually for real? What’s it about? I built a client that’s connected to the network. I kind of saw transactions come through. Okay, this actually works as advertised. Read about the economics of it. And I thought, okay, well, maybe I do want to invest in this thing. How do I do it? And there was only one exchange out there at the time. It was called Mt. Gox. It’s quite infamous because they got hacked and they were pretty bad. looking back, they were really doing the best they could. They weren’t really equipped to handle the volumes that they were seeing. They began as an exchange to trade trading cards or something, ⁓ magic the gathering exchange. And then all of a sudden they pivoted to trading Bitcoin and then Bitcoin just kind of became really big all of a sudden and the volumes they were seeing they just weren’t really prepared for and I guess it was obvious to us that if this was ever going to become an asset class, if it was ever going to become an industry. And at that point, no one really knew that there would be a need for reliable infrastructure. And I guess naively we thought that we’d be able to build an exchange using our own in-house expertise and how hard could it be, right? I guess looking back, was pretty hard, probably harder than we expected. ⁓ Yeah, so we incorporated Independent Reserve, you try to figure out how to create a company in ASIC and all that kind of things. Then we realized we’re going to raise some money because this is probably going to cost more than we thought. So we, okay, how do you raise money? ⁓ So, you we started pitching to investors. Most people didn’t know what Bitcoin was. People thought we were building some kind of a dark market because that’s that’s kind of what
speaker-0: Was it in the media as the dark web at that time?
speaker-1: Very briefly, it wasn’t getting much coverage in the media, but any coverage it did get usually wasn’t very good. So when you go around asking people for money to build this thing in Bitcoin, like you’d get confusion, you’d get, you are you a criminal? So, you you’ve got to take people on this. big journey educating them about what Bitcoin is, why people would need infrastructure, why people would want to hold it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that took quite a while and we raised about half a million dollars, which doesn’t seem like much, but I guess when you’re kind of building things yourself, you can kind of drag it out for quite a while. And it took us about 18 months to build Independent Reserve. And then we, you know, when we launched, we were like super excited, right? We built this best Bitcoin exchange ever. And then nobody cared. This is sad.
speaker-0: Did you have anything if nobody cared? ⁓ You obviously had something else going on to propel you to stick with it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, we still believed that the asset class had ⁓ a future and we still really held a belief that people would want Bitcoin in the future. There is a use case. We just got to kind of keep at it. And we did. I mean it really was not easy. Just after we launched actually Adam had an accident and we lost ⁓ Adam at the time. ⁓ He unfortunately died. So then there was a time when I was kind of running it by myself and that was really really tough. I was running code and doing the support messages and KYC basically everything. So that was really tough. But then eventually, like two or three years later of doing that, the market really turned. And in 2017, the price of Bitcoin went from about $1,000 to $20,000 and everything just exploded.
speaker-0: And you were sort of first mover in Australia, so that positioned you.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t just us. were like two or three other exchanges that launched at around the time that we did. So there’s this kind of core group of exchanges in Australia that have been around for a really long time. But yeah, I mean, we’re one of the oldest crypto exchanges, not just in Australia, but also in the world. Like we’ve been doing this since 2013, which is really quite a long time to be doing anything. Especially a crypto exchange.
speaker-0: It really is. And we’ll talk a little bit about the Adrian and the Independent Reserve shortly. But back in the early days, and ⁓ Adam was that book that he wrote on the regs and the regulatory environment was the first book that I saw that sort of created that initial framework in Australia or even lit up some people’s light bulbs around this is the regulatory environment that we need for these types of businesses to survive. And he had a good little blurb in there and actually a really good activity for me to do would be to compare and contrast what we have now to what he sort of ⁓ outlined there. But even in the early days was regulation something that…
speaker-1: So we always had a belief that for crypto to become ⁓ a mainstream asset class that normal people are able to use and invest in, regulation is crucial because without that, you know, there’ll always be bad players who will try and cut corners who maybe won’t do things the right way. Maybe they won’t hold the assets appropriately. Maybe they’ll lend them out. All those things. And that creates a huge risk to all the consumers. And it also means that it prevents ⁓ real institutions from investing in the asset class because institutions won’t invest until the rules are there. So we actually applied for an AFSL back in 2013, 2014. ⁓ And you know the landscape back then was a lot different to what it is now. ⁓ ASIC really didn’t know what Bitcoin was. They asked us. I remember when Mt. Gox got hacked and our AFSL application was in flight. I had a call from ASIC. from the person at who was looking after our application. And he said, now that Bitcoin’s gone bankrupt, do you still need this AFSL? Because Bitcoin’s not around anymore. Hang on, Bitcoin’s not gone bankrupt. It’s just an exchange in Japan. But he’s like, oh, okay, okay, fair enough. Anyway, in the end, we’ve got a relief letter from ASIC that basically said Bitcoin’s not a financial product and AFSL is not required to run a cryptocurrency exchange. And that’s kind of been the stance ever since until the loss that could yesterday. So now we will get an AFSL especially for us which is quite incredible. mean it’s more than we could have really hoped for back in 2013. We will have our own type of AFSL specific for cryptocurrency exchanges which is just really amazing.
speaker-0: Do you think that ⁓ now is the real maturation of the industry? Are you seeing that now?
speaker-1: Look, mean, it’s not like we’re all wearing suits. But I mean, what does it mean to be mature? I think regulation is definitely a very big part of it. ⁓ But I mean, we’ve the industry has evolved over time, not just in Australia, but also all around the world. As the industry grew, as more people used crypto, as more people were employed in cryptocurrency companies, it inevitably became more mature, more serious, there was more money involved. Regulations started popping up around the world, which is obviously very important. And then that allowed access to other services like insurance, like the banking, which all these things… are required for the industry to be able to grow and I think regulation is a necessary thing. It’s definitely going to be an inflection point in the industry here in Australia. I think you’re going to see the industry growing in ways that it wasn’t able to do before regulation and I’m really looking forward to watching that happen.
speaker-0: We have another story, ⁓ another part of the independent reserve story around an acquisition. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So look, we’ve had some long-term, very early investors that invested in us back in 2013, 2014. And understandably, these people were looking for a return on their investment. And we really had a long-hard think about how we could achieve that. And we realized we’re at the point in our evolution that we could really benefit from the synergies of partnering with a traditional financial institution and you know we talked to a whole bunch of different institutions we had we basically ran ⁓ a process with an investment bank that went for about 12 months had many many conversations and we started talking to IG group probably like close to a year ago now and we really you know felt that there was a cultural real cultural alignment that you know they saw the world in a way that wasn’t too different to how we saw the world. They’re obviously a much larger institution. They’ve been around for about 50 years, they’re listed in the UK and London. ⁓ But they’re very much a traditional institution. They’ve got no exposure to the crypto industry and they kind of thought that, you know, the big thing that they really lacked was the knowledge, the know-how ⁓ to be able to offer a crypto product to their customers. ⁓ And what we felt is that what we kind of lacked is the ability to reach a global audience. IG pretty much has that. They’ve got offices all over the world. They’ve got licenses all over the world. They’re big in Europe, in the UK, in the US, in the UAE, in Asia, in Australia. they’re a very large worldwide company. So they saw in us the ability to get into crypto. We saw in them the ability to distribute our product to a much larger audience and that synergy like was too much for us to be able to refuse. So we’re really looking forward to working with IG ⁓ and I think IG is also very excited to be able to offer ⁓ our products to their customers and they have a lot more customers than we do, they’re much bigger so I think this is going to be a really exciting journey ahead.
speaker-0: The industry is evolving so fast and this is one story within the industry. There is some consolidation happening and some people see some of that as a maturation or that’s just what happens when you get regulation and growth and institutions coming in. What are your views around what is happening in the industry? Are you seeing ⁓ different businesses who we’ve all known and love coming together or do you expect that to be more the case in the coming months or years?
speaker-1: I think we’ve seen a little bit of consolidation, but probably not as much as I would have expected, to be absolutely honest with you. ⁓ I think we’ll definitely see more as regulation in Australia comes into force. with regulation, there comes ⁓ the burden of higher compliance costs. it’s probably… not going to work out well for everyone. So I think right now in Ostrac there are about 300 registered cryptocurrencies.
speaker-0: 490.
speaker-1: 418 crypto exchanges in Australia. Now that number seems a bit ridiculous. I don’t think there are actually that many, but it’s pretty obvious that they can’t all meet the bar of being regulated by ASIC, right? So that’s going to result in a wave of consolidation across the industry. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. know, the crypto industry is still highly competitive in Australia and also pretty much all around the world. So it’s not like this consolidation is going to result in some kind of an environment where there’s only one or two players. ⁓ But it will mean that the players that remain will be better resourced, they’ll have the ability to offer greater levels of consumer protection. So I think we’ll end up with a more mature marketplace that is still highly competitive. So I think it’s going to be good thing.
speaker-0: Not to be rude or anything, but your exchange has been, I guess, consumer protection first for, as you said, since the inception, it’s about compliance. You went for that AFSL as soon as it was possibly available to you. So it’s been quite a boring… compliance first approach that you’ve had. Would you contribute that to the success that you’ve seen over the past decade?
speaker-1: ⁓ Look, I think maybe it’s a reflection of who we are, not to say that we’re boring. I don’t think we’re Are we boring?
speaker-0: Well, I put that in here in my nose. Boring and reliable. We’ve had some good parties. Yeah. ⁓ I know you’ve had some great parties.
speaker-1: Look, I think holding people’s assets is a serious business. You don’t want to mess with it. You don’t want to lose people’s money. You don’t want to do anything that puts people’s assets at risk. And that’s always been at the forefront of everything that we do. Like we hold. a lot of money for a lot of different people and these people trust us to do the right thing, to not lose their assets, to make sure that when they want to withdraw them that they’re there to be withdrawn and that’s a really important thing that we do and we take that very, very seriously. yeah, mean, I guess maybe that’s a bit boring, but it’s really important.
speaker-0: Well, I sometimes see compliance and maybe I’m a bit boring, but I see it as a competitive advantage in particularly in our industry. And I have seen some ⁓ licenses used in marketing, actually, which is interesting for this sector.
speaker-1: Yeah, I we’ve, I guess, always invested heavily into compliance. It’s one of these things where, I guess I’d call it like a lagging competitive advantage, like you don’t see the returns right away. But if you have a good understanding of your risks, if your risk framework, you know, is at a very high level, all these things become very important. If anything ever goes wrong, you know, if you enter a bear market or if something happens, that’s when you want to be able to fall back on the investment that you’ve in compliance, in risk, because that’s what actually what makes your business resilient and strong. that’s kind of how I see it. So it’s not an advantage in the short term, but in the long term, there will be things that go wrong. I guess the exchanges that don’t have the grounding in risk and compliance, like FTX, for example, well, they’re just not gonna survive. ⁓ So if you wanna be there for the long term, ⁓ it’s kind of a non-negotiable. That’s the way I it.
speaker-0: Yeah, I agree. We’re definitely in the same camp there. Do you think that there might be consequences of these 300 of these 418 exchanges that are AusTrack registered, if something was to happen to one of them, do you think there’ll be a consequence on the rest of the industry?
speaker-1: I mean realistically depends on the size of that exchange. So that I mean there have been various exchanges in Australia that had issues but luckily you know there weren’t the really big ones. But I guess the way the industry has evolved is that you know there’s probably like three or four large exchanges in Australia and 414 ones that aren’t that large. Obviously we don’t want to see anything go wrong at any of them but you know if something were to go wrong at one of the large ones that’s a risk ⁓ to the financial system in Australia. that exchanges have gotten that big. So we half a million customers, guess CoinSpot’s got like two or three million customers, SwiftEx might have a million customers. ⁓ That’s a lot of people. So you know if there was to be ⁓ an event at one of those exchanges it’s not going to be pretty so I hope it doesn’t happen.
speaker-0: No, no. I think with that, the solid framework around us, those who you mentioned, I think are probably the North Star. But do you think policymakers have got it right enough that there is that protection? Do you think that what we’ve got now?
speaker-1: think what we have now is obviously not good enough, but what we will have once ⁓ the new regulation is in place, ⁓ I think that will put us in a much, much better position. mean, ultimately right now, we’re relying on exchanges voluntarily doing all the right things. The regulations will place a requirement on them to do the right things, ⁓ which is obviously a lot better than just hoping everyone does the right thing. I guess, luckily for us in Australia, everyone has done the right thing. unlucky but you don’t want to be relying on luck for too long.
speaker-0: No, do you think there’s second order effects of, you know, this digital asset platform reforms, this regulation that’s legislation that’s just been passed. Do you think that’s pretty close to perfect or that’s that’s going to protect?
speaker-1: if it’s perfect. mean, you’ll probably never have anything that is absolutely perfect, but I think it’s pretty good. I think it’s definitely a lot better than not having anything at all. And I don’t think it’s too onerous either, which is good because I mean, the tricky job for regulators, right? If they under regulate, then consumers are at risk. If they over regulate, it’s even worse because exchanges will end up leaving ⁓ the local market and then people will be forced to use overseas exchanges, which aren’t regulated at all or the regulator in a different restrictions so there’s no recourse. you need to create, as a regulator, have to create a set of rules that encourages people to remain in Australia and also protects consumers. And that’s not the easiest thing to do. But look, I think the laws that we will have, they’re more or less… on point, like I’m sure they’ll evolve over time, there’ll be amendments to them or whatever, but I think it’s a really good starting point.
speaker-0: Do you think what we have, so we’ve seen a bit of an exodus, we’ve seen businesses go overseas just because it was a little bit uncertain. Some of the international businesses have come and gone because it wasn’t quite right. Do you think the talent situation and the small business ⁓ or even new businesses being born, that will change? Do you think we’ll see some positive changes there?
speaker-1: You mean more businesses getting created in Australia? Well, I hope so. ⁓ I think you’d definitely see more ⁓ businesses from overseas entering the Australian market, whether…
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, because of the clarity.
speaker-1: whether new businesses in Australia will be created from scratch or not. don’t know. guess traditionally Australia’s never been a huge hub for this. Like yes, there have been a few businesses like us that began in Australia and we’ve been in Australia for a long time. for whatever reason, I guess most technology startups are created in the U.S. But look, I… 100 % hope that ⁓ the ecosystem in Australia continues to grow, that it continues to be, to get some ⁓ even larger. But the big issue that we have in Australia is that our population sizes isn’t that big. So the market is often not big enough to launch. ⁓ one product and expect to be able to make enough revenue on the product to be able to actually have a real company. Whereas if you do it in the US, the market’s much larger, it’s easier to make enough revenue on whatever you do to be able to create a company that’s then able to create other products and is able to grow. So the market size in Australia has, I guess, always been a handicap here.
speaker-0: Do you… I mean, we’ve got enough land. We’ve got enough land. Definitely. Well, for the success of our economy as well. So do you think ⁓ as we… If I can compare, I guess, where you were, and I’m sorry I’m obsessed with your origin story, it’s just that it’s so rare in Australia to find successful businesses. not just in digital assets or even in tech, but in any Australian business, it’s really hard as a small business owner with all of the different regulations and tax and just cost of living and that sort of thing. So I’m sorry that I’m obsessed with it, but I, I, I, you’re so, I would be very, I’m proud of. independent reserve. So if you could look, you should be, I mean, I think you’re very humble in your role, but you should, you have a unique view of exactly where you were in the thick of it, getting shot at and whatever. And you went through a lot in the early days. What is the difference between then and now? Like what is something, and I know that there’s big differences, but what feels different compared to then and now.
speaker-1: Then and now, guess back then we were really fighting to survive. ⁓ The industry, the whole crypto industry, guess it’s kind of cruel in that it’s so cyclical. And this catches a lot of businesses out. like when things are good in the bull markets, It’s amazing. Everything’s good, everything’s working, everything’s growing, you’re getting more more customers. Everything is incredible. And then overnight, it can just go to terrible. It’s literally like from Monday to the next, can go from everything’s awesome to like, do we have enough money to last the winter? Should we have put a little bit more aside? ⁓ So. I mean, that still hasn’t really changed. You know, the fact that the market is very, very cyclical, but we’ve kind of reached a size where we’re no longer hoping to survive. Now we’re trying to manage our growth, knowing that the markets will be cyclical and, you know, trying to have products in the market that aren’t, you know, as exposed to the market cycles in crypto, to have things that are going to make us revenue, whether the market’s good or bad. Like, you know, like if you’re money around the world, well people will need remittances no matter what the market cycle is. But if you’re just trading crypto, well the volumes are probably going to drop in the bear market. So we’re working hard to diversify ⁓ the products that we have so that we’re not as correlated to the market cycles. So now we’re not in the spot where we’re hoping to survive and we’re like really, really having to fight for our lives where we’re now, you know, we now have the luxury to be able to really plan out the next two or three years and, you know, be able to really have a plan and then no matter what the market does, we can execute on that plan. So I guess we’ve matured a little bit as a company in that sense.
speaker-0: Wow, that’s an understatement, understatement of the day. I think we might wrap up with one of those long-term vision statements, which everyone loves. But if you’re going to look back in 10 years, what are you going to say is that number one thing that Australia did right for the success that I imagine and maybe you imagine is going to be at our fingertips?
speaker-1: So look, I think it’s important to remember that the crypto industry and the crypto rails, you know, as more and more things are tokenized as they come on onto these rails, they’re going to become nationally and strategically important. So it’s, it’s, should be beginning to think about this, you know, as there’s almost like a national strategic project that’s, that’s going to ⁓ really help Australia. ⁓ become even more prosperous in the future as opposed to this this kind of little thing on the side that is a little bit annoying that we should regulate because the industry wants to be regulated because as as this matures you’re going to see more and more things come onto this rails you’re going to see tokenized equities you’re going to see maybe the housing market get tokenized like it’s all going to because it’s just a more efficient way to move ownership money and assets around it’ll naturally attract more and more things and I think we’re almost at the inflection point now where I think the ⁓ New York Stock Exchange recently announced that they’re going to tokenize the equities that they list. So this is going to happen all over the world, right? And this is going to require these crypto rails. And the things that crypto exchanges are doing now is really the precursor to that big wave that’s about to come. So I really hope that, you know, as a country, we give it the priority and the attention that it deserves, because otherwise we’ll be looking back up on this time and going, ⁓ I wish we had taken it more seriously because now all these jobs have gone overseas. Now we’re hiring these overseas companies to use their products rather than have an industry that was grown right here, know, employing people in Australia, paying taxes in Australia. I mean, it’s yeah, it can go one way or the other. ⁓ I know which way I want it to go. But it requires it requires more attention ⁓ from, I guess, the politicians in Canberra. And it requires the acknowledgement that, this this industry is more than just NFTs of cats or whatever. There’s actually going to be some massive asset flows that will go on these rails. they’re around the corner and they’re coming.
speaker-0: And I think it will be remembered that exchanges like Independent Reserve have literally built the plumbing and the digital infrastructure required for the tokenization of real world assets. that recognition cannot come soon enough. Thank you so much for coming on the House’s Digital, Adrian. It’s been a pleasure.
speaker-1: Thank you very much. Great chat.
speaker-0: digital, where policy meets innovation. Stay curious, stay inspired and be part of the movement building Australia’s next economy. The future is happening now. See you in the next episode.
speaker-1: you