For Richmond, the delay is not due to regulators acting slowly, but rather to a structural difference between the frameworks of the United States and Canada.
“It’s not necessarily a regulatory issue; it’s just the nature of the rules are different,” he said.
Harmonized ‘national instrument’
While there is still work to be done, Richmond is encouraged by the fact that Canadian regulators are actively listening to industry players about digital asset products and are open to creating new regulatory frameworks to support the growing industry.
One example that Richmond cited as “very good legislation” is the new Stablecoin Act, which was enacted by the Canadian federal government earlier this year, after the United States passed the GENIUS Act last year.
In the wake of the passage of the Stablecoin Act, Canada has already seen Tetra Trust, a company backed by heavyweights like Wealthsimple, Shopify and the National Bank of Canada, launch the first Canadian dollar stablecoin, CADD, issued by a regulated financial institution in Canada.
Canada has already shown that crypto companies can operate within a regulated market. The next test is whether its rules can accommodate products that go beyond spot trading into payments, derivatives, tokenized securities and decentralized finance.
Richmond said that rather than having companies interpret these guidelines, “codifying” existing regulatory practices into a national framework that is applied consistently across provincial securities regulators will help reduce legal uncertainties for builders. Essentially, he argued that Canada should consolidate more of its existing crypto requirements into a “national instrument”: a set of harmonized securities rules adopted by all provincial and territorial regulators.
