Coinbase Seeks Broader Crypto Offering in Canada, Citing Need for Clearer Rules

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 move beyond temporary exemptions if it wants to keep pace with the industry’s next phase.

Richmond said Coinbase ultimately wants to expand beyond a crypto trading platform and offer 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.”

He said that vision in Canada depends largely on the regulatory framework, especially as the market shifts from basic spot trading toward products such as payments, lending, futures and tokenized assets that may require more specific rules.

“We just need to find the regulated path to get launches to Canadians, and we've started to do that,” Richmond said. He has worked extensively in Canada’s digital assets sector in previous executive roles at companies including Shakepay and Coinsquare.

Canada was among the first jurisdictions to approve spot crypto exchange-traded funds and to create a registration framework for crypto trading platforms. Richmond said, however, that much of that progress relied on regulatory staff notices and company-specific exemption orders rather than legislation built specifically for digital assets. That approach helped Canada move quickly in crypto’s early years, he said, but has become less effective as companies try 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 remarks come as Canada and the U.S. are increasingly taking different approaches to crypto regulation, a split that matters because firms often build products for the most clearly defined market first and then adapt them elsewhere.

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. The U.S., however, has gone further in issuing detailed guidance on tokenized securities, collateral, custody and capital treatment, the report said.

In Canada, regulators “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 broader adoption and give U.S. firms greater influence over emerging industry standards.

Nature of rules

Current Canadian rules also mean consumers often wait longer to access products already available to users in the U.S.

One product Coinbase U.S. offers to its “Coinbase One” customers is a stablecoin lending program that pays about 7% APY, similar to Robinhood’s Earn product. That product is not available to Canadian users. Instead, Canadian customers can earn up to 4.5% APY for holding USDC on Coinbase.

Richmond said he is working to align product access on both sides of the border.

“My focus is to bring the products that you see in the U.S. to Canadians,” he said.

Another product Coinbase hopes to roll out is access to certain crypto futures products for “permitted” Canadian customers through its CFTC-regulated arm, Coinbase Financial Markets. Richmond said that was possible because the company received an “international exemption” from Canadian regulators to offer the product in Canada.

However, Coinbase would need additional regulatory approvals to offer the product to broader retail customers in Canada. In the U.S., by contrast, because the business is CFTC-regulated, retail expansion approval would be embedded in the process.

For Richmond, the issue is less about regulators moving slowly than about the structural differences between U.S. and Canadian frameworks.

“It's not necessarily just a regulatory thing; just the nature of the rules is different,” he said.

Harmonized national instrument

Richmond said he is encouraged that Canadian regulators are listening to industry participants and appear open to creating new frameworks to support the sector’s growth.

He pointed to the new Stablecoin Act as “a very good piece of legislation.” The Canadian federal government enacted the law earlier this year, after the U.S. passed the GENIUS Act last year.

Following passage of the Stablecoin Act, Tetra Trust — backed by companies including Wealthsimple, Shopify and National Bank of Canada — launched Canada’s first regulated financial institution-issued Canadian-dollar stablecoin, CADD.

Canada has already shown that crypto companies can operate inside a regulated market. The next test is whether its rules can accommodate products that move beyond spot trading into payments, derivatives, tokenized securities and decentralized finance, areas that typically require clearer treatment around custody, disclosure and market access.

Richmond said that instead of leaving companies to interpret guidelines on their own, Canada should “codify” existing regulatory practices into a national framework applied consistently across provincial securities regulators. He said that would reduce legal uncertainty for builders.

He argued that Canada should consolidate more of its existing crypto requirements into a “national instrument” — a set of harmonized securities rules adopted across provincial and territorial regulators.

“When you call it a national instrument, it means every single securities commission has approved this rule, and so it's harmonizing the rules across Canada, ensuring that everyone's treated fairly in every single province across the country,” he said.

Such a framework would move Canada away from a system built largely on exemptions and toward one that gives both regulators and companies greater certainty as crypto expands into payments, tokenized assets and decentralized finance.

Whether policymakers choose that path could determine how quickly products already available to U.S. customers reach Canada.