Labor senator Sam Dastyari and Liberal senator Jane Hume have pushed for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to "embrace bitcoins as an official form of currency," the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Tuesday. Dastyari represents Australia's largest State, New South Wales. Hume represents Victoria, the most densely-populated and second most populous state.

Without embracing bitcoin, Australia risks the future competitiveness its financial services industry worth $145 billion a year, the publication detailed, and quoted Dastyari saying:

This will be a revolutionary leap for the Reserve Bank and for Australian financial institutions. What we want to do here in Parliament is to create the political environment to allow that leap to occur.

When he first talked about bitcoin in the Senate, he recalled that one of his colleagues said to him, "I don't get what the issue is, don't they just melt all the coin bits they don't use?" the publication detailed.