Coinbase wants to be Canada’s ‘everything exchange,’ but says clearer rules are needed first

TORONTO — Coinbase wants to bring more of the crypto products available to its U.S. customers, including derivatives, decentralized finance services and tokenized assets, to Canada, but Eric Richmond, the exchange's newly-appointed Canadian CEO, says the country's regulatory framework needs to evolve beyond temporary exemptions if it wants to keep pace with the industry's next phase.

Richmond said the firm ultimately wants to expand beyond just a crypto trading platform, instead offering a broader suite of financial products built on blockchain infrastructure.

"We want to have all your financial services in one place," Richmond said in an interview with CoinDesk at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto. "We want to be that everything exchange... underpinned by this technology, where it's 24/7, seamless, frictionless."

However, delivering on that vision in Canada depends largely on the country's regulatory framework, according to Richmond.

"We just need to find the regulated path to get launches to Canadians, and we've started to do that," said Richmond. He has been deeply involved in the Canadian digital assets landscape from his former executive roles in companies including Shakepay and Coinsquare.

While Canada was among the world's earliest jurisdictions to approve spot crypto exchange-traded funds and to establish a registration framework for crypto trading platforms, Richmond said much of that progress relied on regulatory staff notices and company-specific exemption orders rather than legislation specifically designed for digital assets. That approach helped Canada move quickly in crypto's early years, he said, but has become less effective as companies seek to launch more sophisticated products.

"It's not a new bespoke legislative framework. And that is something I actually think we still need," Richmond said.

His comments come as Canada and the U.S. are beginning to take different approaches to crypto regulation.

Take tokenization, for example: both countries generally treat tokenized financial instruments under the same laws that govern their traditional equivalents, according to a July report from global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright. However, the U.S. has moved further in issuing detailed guidance for tokenized securities, collateral, custody and capital treatment, the report said.

Regulators in Canada, meanwhile, "remain at a predominantly consultative stage, with the [Canadian Securities Administrators] CSA having issued only limited exemptive relief for pilot projects and [Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization] CIRO’s custody framework expressly described as interim guidance," the law firm wrote.

Neither country has completed a comprehensive, permanent framework designed specifically for tokenized financial assets. Still, Norton Rose said the more advanced state of U.S. regulatory guidance could allow American infrastructure to achieve wider adoption and give U.S. firms greater influence over emerging industry standards.

Another consequence of current Canadian regulations is that consumers face delays in accessing apps that users south of the border already use.