Australian Bitcoin Lobby Files Complaint, Says ABC News Framed BTC as Crime Tool and Ignored Use Cases

Australia’s public broadcaster has been put on notice. The Australian Bitcoin Industry Body (ABIB) lodged a formal complaint on Tuesday against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), alleging its recent Bitcoin coverage was skewed, error-prone, and in breach of ABC’s own Editorial Policies and Code of Conduct.

At the heart of ABIB’s filing is a simple contention: ABC’s analysis didn’t just critique Bitcoin—it recast it. The contested article, authored by ABC’s chief business correspondent, argued Bitcoin has failed to meet its goals, lacks practical utility, serves people “operating in the shadows,” and has been supplanted by stablecoins such as Tether. ABIB says that framing misrepresents Bitcoin’s purpose, conflates it with criminal activity, omits well-documented use cases, and leans on sensational language over evidence.

ABIB’s complaint points to areas ABC allegedly ignored: energy-grid stabilization pilots, humanitarian remittances, merchant acceptance, and even sovereign reserve strategies. The group says it hears regularly from Australians who are frustrated by recurring mischaracterizations—especially from a taxpayer-funded institution expected to deliver accurate, impartial reporting across television, radio, and digital platforms. ABIB’s submission cites the specific lines it says are problematic, details policy breaches, and asks ABC to issue corrections, meet its editorial obligations, and bring subject-matter experts into future crypto coverage. “The public deserve better,” the group said, adding that Bitcoin shouldn’t be dismissed using dated narratives.

My read: the real issue isn’t whether Bitcoin is perfect—it’s the category error in comparing a permissionless settlement asset to a fiat-pegged payment rail and then indicting the former using the latter’s controversies. Bitcoin’s core function is censorship-resistant value transfer and settlement; stablecoins target price stability and fiat interoperability. Treating one as a failed version of the other creates misleading expectations, then uses those to justify blanket claims about utility or user base. That kind of framing shapes public perception, policy bias, and commercial adoption in ways that can outlast any market cycle.

The ABC piece leaned heavily on Tether criticism, citing a broad investigation that labeled USDT a preferred instrument for illicit finance. It also referenced reporting from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that at least $1.4 billion in USDT moved through a wallet tied to Cambodia-based Huione Group—an entity U.S. authorities flagged for laundering billions linked to North Korean hackers, human trafficking, and large-scale scams. In October, the U.S. and UK cut Huione off from the international banking system, and branches of its Huione Pay service reportedly closed and halted cash withdrawals this week. These are serious claims that warrant scrutiny—but they relate to a centralized stablecoin issuer and third-party intermediaries, not the Bitcoin protocol. Lumping them together muddies risk analysis and leads to blunt policy tools that rarely land where intended.

Markets add context. Bitcoin rebounded to $92,972—up 6.4% over the last day per CoinGecko—after a sharp pullback in recent weeks. On prediction market Myriad, traders as of early Wednesday were assigning a 78.4% probability that BTC reaches $100,000 in the near term. Disclosure: Myriad is owned by DASTAN. Price action doesn’t validate narratives on its own, but it does show that investors are still pricing distinct roles for BTC and stablecoins—store-of-value and settlement layer on one side; fiat-anchored liquidity rails on the other.

ABC News and Tether were approached for further comment.

Public broadcasters carry a unique responsibility: precision in language, especially when covering open, programmable financial networks. When a story collapses distinct architectures into a single moral judgment, it discourages informed debate and rewards the loudest trope. If ABC tightens its standards the way ABIB requests—more primary data, clearer distinctions between protocols and issuers, and expert review—Australia’s audience will be better served. That rigor is not pro- or anti-crypto; it’s pro-clarity. And clarity is what this market chronically lacks.