Bigg Digital Assets (BIGG.C) applied to the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) and the Canadian Securities Administrators’ (CSA) regulatory sandbox for registration of their Netcoins subsidiary to operate as the first regulated crypto-asset trading platform in Canada today.
The CSA sandbox supports financial technology businesses looking to offer innovative products, services and applications in Canada in a bounded, regulatory environment with rules tailored specifically to their needs. Netcoins has been working with the BCSC and the CSA on finding ways to to assess and counter risks associated with crypto-asset trading platforms. The going thought behind this is the more comfort and risk mitigation they can manage, the easier it will be to further crypto adoption in Canada.
“Bigg believes the future of crypto is a compliant, safe and regulated environment. It is the basis of existence for our company. Pending this regulatory approval, Netcoins will be the first registered open-loop crypto-trading platform in Canada. This will be a fundamental change for crypto trading in Canada. As individuals and corporations seek to trade crypto assets, they would have a fully legal and registered platform available to them. We also believe this will have a significant positive impact on Netcoins trading volumes in the coming months, being a unique competitive advantage. We look forward to updating our shareholders further with developments in the coming weeks,” said Mark Binns, chief executive officer of Bigg Digital Assets.
Normally when writing about Bigg Digital, we’d be writing about their subsidiary Blockchain Intelligence Group’s Qualitative Law Enforcement Unified Edge (QLUE) program. QLUE is a program used by law enforcement, banks, and other financial institutions to provide security for blockchain investigations and do due diligence with deeper forensic reach. Each point along the blockchain is represented by a series of numbers, and what Bigg does is trace the path a particular coin takes along through this highway of numbers.
Blockchain Intelligence started with Bitcoin and has since expanded QLUE’s reach to include most of the major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, and stablecoin transactions.
Now it’s NetCoins turn, and just in time too, because cryptocurrency is in dire need of a win.
“There have been numerous high-profile failures of Canadian crypto-asset trading platforms in the past two years, costing investors hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars, and shaking consumer confidence. A lack of oversight has created instability in the industry, and we believe this instability is slowing consumer adoption of cryptocurrency. Hence, we at Netcoins see the need for a regulated crypto-asset trading platform in Canada that investors and traders can trust. Being owned by a public, audited and transparent company has given Netcoins the unique ability to bring a safe crypto-trading solution to life across Canada,” said Mitchell Demeter, president of Netcoins.
Demeter is absolutely right that the problem was a lack of regulation. It’s hard to trust your money to a site with no accountability or transparency.
Remember the Einstein exchange? If you don’t (or better yet, don’t want too) then you can surely be forgiven. Lots of people lost their savings when that went up in smoke. How about Quadriga CX, and the mysterious case of the missing crypto? If Gerald Cotten’s still alive as the conspiracy pundits theorize then surely he’s laughing at everyone he bilked from some cozy little island in Micronesia. Even if he did actually die in India, he left behind a hard hill for the rest of us to climb.
But having an exchange backed by a regulatory body with all of the appropriate protections that come along with traditional trading in an asset class would be more than a step towards mass adoption, it might be what’s required to get over the legacy of failure left over by the collapse of 2018.
Mind the cliche, but only time will tell.
—Joseph Morton
