For Richmond, the delay is not due to the slowness of regulators, but to a structural difference between the American and Canadian frameworks.
“It’s not necessarily just a question of regulation; the nature of the rules is just different,” he said.
Harmonized “national instrument”
While there is still work to be done, Richmond is encouraged that Canadian regulators are actively listening to industry stakeholders on digital asset products and are open to creating new regulatory frameworks to support the growing industry.
One example cited by Richmond as “a very good piece of legislation” is the new Stablecoin Act, which was signed into law by the Canadian federal government earlier this year, after the United States passed the GENIUS Act last year.
Following the passage of the Stablecoin Act, Canada has already seen Tetra Trust – a company backed by heavyweights such as 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 and extend to payments, derivatives, tokenized securities and decentralized finance.
Richmond said that, rather than leaving companies to interpret these guidelines, “codifying” existing regulatory practices into a national framework that applies consistently across provincial securities regulators would help reduce legal uncertainty for builders. Essentially, he argued that Canada should further consolidate its existing crypto requirements into a “national instrument” – a set of harmonized securities rules adopted by provincial and territorial regulators.
