Canada to Issue Proposals on Cryptocurrency Regulations

By Kapil Gauhar

The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), a non-profit self-regulatory body has recently formed a dynamic working group that primarily aims to provide assistance and recommendations to a potential regulatory response to Blockchain applications. This announcement of the formation of a group was made on June 25 summarizing IIROC’s aims for the 2019 fiscal year. In general, Canada’s IIROC aims to assist the public interest by suggesting methods that in turn could protect investors and support healthy domestic capital markets.

As part of its vision for the forthcoming year, the IIROC too has outlined various factors that it considers to be the stakes of the rise of Blockchain technology and its correlated applications, counting cryptocurrencies. In fact, this body stated that:

“The potential application of Blockchain technology is self-possessed to vividly change the system that supports the capital markets. Today, these digital assets like cryptocurrencies have started to bring a serious impact to the capital markets in substantial ways, as potential indirect or direct investments, or in the form of initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, etc.”

Consequently, today in order to retain pace with the quick evolving crypto sphere and its transformational consequences for the current financial order, IIROC’s created new working group will emphasize on creating knowledge of new innovations. The most important aspect to note is that the organization will also network with other Canadian regulators or even stakeholders to improve a regulatory strategy. Just a few weeks back, the Canadian government made an official announcement of new regulations for crypto exchanges and payment processors, which would help in strengthening their acquiescence with the country’s Anti Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Regime (AML/ATF).

Moreover, as per recent analysis, the country has been very active in building blockchain applications applicable across varied fields like finance, legal, government, energy, health, space, education, national and multinational cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offerings (ICOs). Apart from that, the Bank of Canada (BoC) has been busy in performing experiments with a major blockchain Proof-of-Concept (PoC), dubbed “Project Jasper,” for securities settlements since 2016.

During the start of this month, a BoC official publicly too raised doubts as to the potential benefits of the project and even suggested that at present, there is no cost-saving effect in comparison to the existing central bank system. In fact, BoC even went ahead to state that the hacking and there is a high probability that other operational risks might occur.  

Kapil Gauhar

Kapil Gauhar is the founder of Blogger’s Gyan. He is a Passionate Blogger, a Big Thinker and a Creative Writer. His passion for doing friendship with words and letting people know about the wonders of the Digital World is what motivates him to take writing as a career.

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