OSC Head Says Cryptocurrency Development Causes Concern

The Ontario Securities Commission’s chief executive officer, Grant Vingoe, restated the regulator’s technology-neutral stance on crypto while predicting that more Canadians will become HODLers in the near future.

Vingoe stated in a keynote talk to the Economic Club of Canada on October 6 that the regulatory foundations of stocks and bonds applied equally to crypto contracts, with the vast majority of crypto-based businesses falling under the OSC’s authority.

The OSC chief stated that the regulator viewed Bitcoin (BTC) to be primarily a commodity, whereas arrangements that trading platforms make with investors constituted securities.

“As securities regulators, none of the characteristics of crypto assets or their underlying technology, either positive or negative, drives our regulatory approach.

We are not here to pick winners and losers among investments. We take a careful and technology-neutral approach to all new products that come into our market, and we apply the same reasoning in assessing them,” said Vingoe.

He went on to say that the rising crypto market’s interconnectedness with the banking system might be a source of concern, citing the collapse of digital asset exchange QuadrigaCX:

“We know from our own research (being published later this month) that more than 30 per cent of Canadians plan to buy crypto assets in the next year.

It is a challenge to bar non-compliant firms from offering services in Canada. With a limited budget and finite Enforcement staff to cover our entire capital markets, there is only so much we can do. But we are making progress.”

The Canada-based agency has filed enforcement procedures against cryptocurrency startups Bybit and KuCoin, citing a violation of securities rules and the operation of unregistered crypto asset trading platforms.

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