In recent years, global blockchain discourse has been dominated by the United States: its legislative stagnation, grass wars between agencies and intermittent moments of regulatory clarity. As the United States continued to deal with its internal contradictions, other jurisdictions have tried to fill the void. Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and Gibraltar were placed as cryptographic centers. However, each of them faced a critical limitation: none were natural centers of technological innovation on a global scale.
Canada, on the contrary, has a position often overlooked but exceptionally strategic. Not only is he geographically aligned and culturally with the United States, but also shares an related business spirit. More importantly, Canada has deep and organic roots in blockchain innovation. Ethereum, possibly the most important programmable blockchain platform, only surpassed by Bitcoin by market capitalization, was conceived in Toronto.
William Mougayar is the author of the best -selling book, The Business Blockchain. Consensus 2025 takes place in Toronto from May 14 to 16.
Blockstream, the Central Bitcoin Infrastructure Company, is based in Montreal. It is common to find Canadian engineers, developers and executives who play fundamental roles in the main American blockchain companies. Thousands more contribute independently as Technologists and Software Blockchain developers.
Beyond this historical basis of significance and talent, Canada has a critical structural advantage: agility. Where the United States looks heavy due to institutional complexity, Canada can be agile.
In the United States, the path to coherent cryptographic regulation remains entangled in bureaucratic inertia. The legislation moves between the Chamber and the Senate, often stagnating or contradicting itself. Agencies such as SEC and CFTC continue to compete for jurisdiction. Even with the appointment of a cryptographic tsar of the White House and an executive director, the implementation continues. Despite all its ambition, the US regulatory machine. It moves like a superker, slow to pivot and load for procedural friction.
Canada, in contrast, benefits from fewer government layers, a closer coordination between agencies and a regulatory culture that, when it is sufficiently motivated, can respond with speed and clarity. This structural simplicity has a rare opportunity: Canada can overcome the US. Uu. By becoming the first G7 nation to adopt a coherent and friendly blockchain strategy with innovation.
This is how that plan could be seen:
- Welcome Blockchain’s global companies. Attract first level talent and new companies with simplified immigration routes, R&D credits, specific tax incentives and bold associations.
- Establish a friendly tax regime with cryptocurrencies. Modernize the fiscal policy to support, not penalize, the use and possession of digital assets. The treatment of capital gains, rethinking income and tokens issuance rules must be clarified and calibrate to encourage innovation.
- Clarify and rationalize regulation. Strong consumer protection and financial integrity are still essential, but ambiguity and extinguishing risk of undermining innovation. Canada can offer clear, proportional and globally respected compromise rules.
- Cryptographic access mandate within Canadian banks. Facilitate institutional adoption by encouraging banks to integrate blockchain systems and allow safe and safe access to regulated cryptographic platforms, including Stablecoins retention.
- Integrate blockchain into capital markets. Empower TMX and provincial exchanges to list digital assets and approved stablecoins. Allow registered distributors runners to offer decentralized finance products (DEFI) to retail and institutional customers.
- Promote the use of blockchain within the government. Encouraging public agencies to pilot blockchain applications, share results and best practices to accelerate adoption between departments and services.
- Establish a national cryptocurrency reserve. In coordination with the Bank of Canada, explore the possession of digital assets selected in the National Balance, an idea whose moment has arrived.
All these steps are part of a larger imperative: Canada’s economy to the future proof. Blockchain is no longer an emerging technology: it is actively reforming sectors such as finance, digital identity, supply chains and games. The countries that lead their adoption will reap economic dividends and shall shape the architecture of the digital era.
The United States can have a scale, impulse and an aggressive mentality, but it is also paralyzed by internal conflict and structural inefficiencies. Canada, on the contrary, is small enough to be agile, but large enough to have an impact.
Canada must act. The opportunity to lead in Blockchain’s innovation is still open. Canada is positioned exclusively to seize. No matter the result of the election on April 28, any severe national agenda must include a bold block chain policy with a future vision.
