Canada Issues New Stringent Guidelines For Crypto Exchanges

• The regulator requires firms to keep their customers’ assets separate from their own.
• Exchanges will have to comply with prohibition on margin and leverage trading.

If they want to operate in Canada, cryptocurrency exchanges will have to comply with stricter regulations. Such as a prohibition on margin and leverage trading. The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) released new guidelines on Monday. That requires firms to keep their customers’ assets separate from their own.

In August, organizations in the cryptocurrency industry were informed that they were required to submit a pre-registration undertaking (PRU) in order to continue running while applying for official registration. However, the CSA has promised that platforms would be informed “shortly” of the date by which PRUs must be submitted.

Recent Events Effect

A PRU would bind platforms to a more stringent set of regulations and procedures, although the CSA has cited “recent events in the crypto market” as the impetus for this change.

The CSA stated:

“Crypto trading platforms giving these undertakings agree to comply with expanded terms and conditions that will include, among other things, requirements to hold Canadian clients’ assets with an appropriate custodian and segregate these assets from the platform’s proprietary business, as well as a prohibition on offering margin or leverage for any Canadian client.”

Moreover, the CSA reaffirmed its view that cryptocurrency assets are very volatile in Monday’s statement. The government of Canada has a generally negative outlook on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. While the central bank of Canada cautioned that Bitcoin and other tokens are not a mechanism to “opt out of inflation,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has criticized his opponents for supporting “questionable, reckless economic ideas” when it comes to cryptocurrency.

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