Photo Illustrating Coinbase in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, China on June 6, 2023 (Photo Illustration by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Coinbase has been granted a registration license in Canada, the company told CNBC, allowing it to make deeper inroads abroad as it faces a regulatory crackdown in its U.S. home market.
The firm said it has been registered in Ontario as a restricted dealer under the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella organization of Canada’s provincial and territorial securities regulators.
Authorization means that the company now meets the Canadian regulators’ strict requirements for crypto assets dealing and can operate legally in the country.
Last year, Canada introduced new guidelines for crypto exchanges that limit how much certain investors can invest in crypto, as well as introduce mandatory registrations for crypto firms.
The policy changes led Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volumes, to quit its activity in Canada, saying it was “no longer tenable” to operate there.
Rival crypto exchange Kraken said last year that it had filed a pre-registration undertaking (PRU) with the Ontario Securities Commission, effectively starting the process to become a registered dealer in Canada.
Coinbase filed its PRU in March 2023 and subsequently officially launched in the country in August that year. The company says it is the first international crypto exchange to receive restricted dealer registration in Canada.
“It’s something we’ve been working on for almost three years here in Canada, and more specifically with the Ontario Securities Commission over the last 12 months,” Lucas Matheson, Coinbase’s country director for Canada, told CNBC.
“We’ve been working diligently with our regulators over the past year on building a compliant platform in Canada to bring to Canadians.”
Matheson said that the regulatory environment in Canada has been more accommodating for crypto…
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