Over the past several years, global discourse around blockchain has been dominated by the United States — its legislative gridlock, inter-agency turf wars, and intermittent moments of regulatory clarity. As the U.S. continued to grapple with its internal contradictions, other jurisdictions have sought to fill the void. Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Gibraltar positioned themselves as crypto hubs. Yet, each of them faced a critical limitation: none were natural centers of technological innovation at global scale.

Canada, by contrast, holds an often-overlooked but exceptionally strategic position. Not only is it geographically and culturally aligned with the United States, but it also shares a kindred entrepreneurial ethos. More importantly, Canada has deep, organic roots in blockchain innovation. Ethereum — arguably the most important programmable blockchain platform, second only to Bitcoin by market capitalization — was conceived in Toronto.

William Mougayar is the Toronto-based author of the best-selling book, The Business Blockchain. Consensus 2025 takes place in Toronto May 14-16.

Blockstream, the core Bitcoin infrastructure company, is based in Montreal. It is commonplace to find Canadian engineers, developers, and executives playing pivotal roles in leading U.S. blockchain firms. Thousands more contribute independently as blockchain technologists and software developers.

Beyond this historical significance and talent base, Canada has a critical structural advantage: agility. Where the United States is weighed down by institutional complexity, Canada can be nimble.

In the U.S., the path to coherent crypto regulation remains tangled in bureaucratic inertia. Legislation shuttles between the House and Senate, often stalling or contradicting itself. Agencies such as the SEC and CFTC continue to compete for jurisdiction. Even with the appointment of a White House crypto czar and an executive director, implementation continues to lag. For all its ambition, the U.S. regulatory machine moves like a supertanker — slow to pivot and burdened by procedural friction.

Canada, in contrast, benefits from fewer layers of government, closer coordination between agencies, and a regulatory culture that — when sufficiently motivated — can respond with speed and clarity. This structural simplicity presents a rare opportunity: Canada can leapfrog the U.S. by becoming the first G7 nation to adopt a coherent, innovation-friendly blockchain strategy.

Here’s what that plan could look like:

• Welcome global blockchain companies. Attract top-tier talent and startups with streamlined immigration pathways, R&D credits, targeted tax incentives, and bold partnerships.
• Establish a crypto-friendly tax regime. Modernize tax policy to support — not penalize — the use and holding of digital assets. Capital gains treatment, staking income, and token issuance rules must be clarified and calibrated to encourage innovation.
• Clarify and streamline regulation. Strong consumer protection and financial integrity remain essential, but ambiguity and overreach risk undermining innovation. Canada can offer clear, proportionate, and globally respected rules of engagement.
• Mandate crypto access within Canadian banks. Facilitate institutional adoption by encouraging banks to integrate blockchain systems and enable seamless, secure access to regulated crypto platforms, including holding stablecoins.
• Integrate blockchain into capital markets. Empower TMX and provincial exchanges to list approved digital assets and stablecoins. Allow registered dealer-brokers to offer decentralized finance (DeFi) products to retail and institutional clients.
• Promote blockchain use within the government. Encourage public agencies to pilot blockchain applications, sharing results and best practices to accelerate adoption across departments and services.
• Establish a national cryptocurrency reserve. In coordination with the Bank of Canada, explore holding select digital assets on the national balance sheet — an idea whose time has come.

All of these steps are part of a larger imperative: future-proofing Canada’s economy. Blockchain is no longer an emerging technology — it is actively reshaping sectors such as finance, digital identity, supply chains, and gaming. Countries that lead in its adoption will reap the economic dividends and shape the architecture of the digital age.

The United States may have scale, momentum, and an aggressive mindset, but it is also paralyzed by internal conflict and structural inefficiencies. Canada, by contrast, is small enough to be agile, yet large enough to make an impact.

Canada must act. The opportunity to lead in blockchain innovation is still wide open. Canada is uniquely positioned to seize it. No matter the outcome of the election on April 28, any serious national agenda must include a bold and forward-thinking blockchain policy.

TRUMP, marketed as Donald Trump’s official crypto token, rallied on Wednesday as an invitation to a dinner event with the U.S. President for token holders appeared on the project’s website.

«Join President Donald J. Trump at his Private, Members-Only Club in Washington, D.C. for Dinner!,» a banner about the event on the project’s website said.

The invite is targeted for the 220 largest token holders, per the event’s website.

The token surged over 70% following the news briefly hitting $16, its strongest price since early March. Later it retraced to below $13, still up 43% over the past 24 hours.

The event, notably, comes after $300 million worth of previously locked-up TRUMP tokens were added to circulation on April 18, according to Tokenomist data. Some 75% of all existing tokens are still locked up, with the next unlock coming up in July increasing the supply by over $600 million of coins.

The TRUMP token, launched only days before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20, was met with industry-wide backlash for capitalizing on the attention and Trump’s public office and heavy allocations to insiders.

The launch also marked the peak in speculative froth on crypto markets. Bitcoin (BTC) declined over 30% from record prices in the following weeks, while many smaller, more speculative cryptocurrencies suffered 80%-90% drawdowns.

Despite today’s rally, TRUMP coin still trades more than 80% below its January 19 record price of $73.

Read more: TRUMP Coin’s Biggest Critics Are Crypto Industry Insiders

A project aiming to expand Bitcoin’s utility is tackling the collateral requirements of bridging the blockchain to programmable layer 2s.

Rollup project Citrea deployed its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet. The bridge uses the BitVM2 programming language to expand the provision for decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin, by using it to verify layer 2s and sidechains that are fully programable in the way Bitcoin isn’t.

«A secure bridge between Bitcoin and a secondary layer has always been a bottleneck for using BTC in a programmable environment,» Citrea said on Monday.

Clementine is designed to solve this by providing a trust-minimized way to bridge bitcoin (BTC) for use in DeFi environments.

The BitVM family of computing paradigms, which could allow Ethereum-style smart contracts on Bitcoin, often lies at the heart of attempts by developers to make the network more programmable and thus allow BTC to power DeFi activities.

However, BitVM is hampered by the requirement to deposit BTC as a security mechanism each time a computation is initiated.

«We reuse the operator’s collateral, allowing them to facilitate multiple peg-outs with a single collateral,» Citrea co-creator Ekrem Bal told CoinDesk in a Telegram message.

Peg-outs refer to the process of moving assets from a sidechain back to Bitcoin, triggering the release of the locked BTC collateral on the main chain.

Citrea deployed Clementine on the original BitVM design last September. Citrea’s latest bridge uses BitVM2, an upgrade that boasts improvements such as allowing any participant to challenge suspicious transactions, not just a fixed set of operators.