Canada will host an election next week, where voters will consider a range of issues — the economy, housing, trade relations with the U.S. — as they choose their elected officials, who in turn will choose the next Prime Minister of the country.

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Canada’s top choices

The narrative

Crypto is not a major electoral issue during this year’s Canadian election. Neither leading Prime Minister candidate has campaigned on digital assets, but here’s how they’ve discussed the issue in the past.

Why it matters

Canada infamously had massive crypto exchange collapses over the past few years, leading to concerted efforts from its provincial regulators to enact guardrails on the digital asset industry. While exchanges like Coinbase are calling for policies like a Canadian government task force or a bitcoin reserve, so far the leading candidates for Prime Minister seem to have other issues on their minds (namely: U.S. relations and trade, housing and the economy).

Breaking it down

When Canadians go to the polls next Monday, they’ll be choosing their Member of Parliament. The party with a majority of seats will form the country’s new government, and the leader of that party will become the new Prime Minister.

While the Conservative Party and its leader Pierre Poilievre held comfortable leads in polling averages through late-January 2025, the Liberal Party saw a massive surge in popularity after U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs with Canada (and most other countries). The Liberal Party, now with leader Mark Carney, has held a significant edge ever since, according to both polling data and Polymarket. Carney took over from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party last month.

Pierre Poilievre

Poilievre is a longtime Bitcoin and blockchain advocate who has led the Conservative Party since September 2022. He owns shares in a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). In 2022, he promised to turn Canada into the «blockchain and crypto capital of the world» during a campaign speech (a phrase Trump later used on the 2024 campaign trail).

«I want to take control of money away from politicians and bankers, and give it back to the people,» he said. «We need to give people the freedom to choose other money. If the government is going to abuse our cash, we should have the right to opt to use other, higher-quality cash.»

He even bought shawarma using bitcoin during his campaign for Conservative Party leader, discussing digital assets in a 30-minute interview with the owner of the restaurant.

He supported Canada’s trucker protest, which dubbed itself the «Freedom Convoy» in early 2022 to object to a vaccine mandate for any truckers crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. At the time, the Canadian government sought to freeze financial support for the protestors, including by sanctioning crypto wallets tied to the truckers.

While Poilievre does not appear to have specifically linked Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to the truckers who may have lost banking access, he did call bitcoin «the single most important asset you could own.»

Poilievre has also opposed the Bank of Canada’s research into a central bank digital currency, arguing that it could infringe on privacy rights or let lawmakers target benefits to supporters. Last year he supported a bill which would have banned a Canadian CBDC outright (echoing U.S. Republicans who have done the same here).

Canadian magazine Maclean’s reported that while Poilievre has said less about crypto in recent days, the Conservative Party as a whole still tends to support the industry, citing various Members of Parliament who have introduced bills or otherwise discussed crypto.

Poilievre did seem to discuss crypto publicly less after FTX’s dramatic collapse in 2022, which his political opponents used to issue warnings about his prior advocacy for digital assets. Poilievre may also be reckoning with Trump’s unpopularity in Canada, and seeking to distance himself from policies that may imitate the U.S. President’s.

Mark Carney

Carney was the head of both the Bank of Canada and later the Bank of England. While he hasn’t said a lot about Bitcoin, he did give a speech on the «future of money» in London in March 2018, where he criticized digital assets’ use, citing speculative mania and a lack of vendors willing to accept it as a payment tool.

«The long, charitable answer is that cryptocurrencies act as money, at best, only for some people and to a limited extent, and even then only in parallel with the traditional currencies of the users,» he said. «The short answer is they are failing.»

Carney pointed to transaction throughput, ease of access and other issues as barriers to digital asset adoption, but said his concerns with digital assets at the time were «not meant to dismiss them.»

«Their core technology is already having an impact. Bringing cryptoassets into the regulatory tent could potentially catalyse innovations to serve the public better,» he said. «Crypto-assets are an attempt to create the financial architecture for peer-to-peer transactions. Even if the current generation is not the answer, it is throwing down the gauntlet to the existing payment systems. These must now evolve to meet the demands of fully reliable, real-time, distributed transactions.»

Carney praised distributed ledgers in particular, and suggested that existing digital asset infrastructure could eventually lead to the creation of a central bank digital currency, though he said «there are also broader societal questions» around issues like privacy should a central bank pursue a CBDC.

Just over a year later at the Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Carney suggested that a global hegemonic digital currency backed by central bank digital currencies could bolster the world economy against the role of the dollar.

«The dollar’s influence on global financial conditions could similarly decline if a financial architecture developed around the new [Synthetic Hegemonic Currency] and it displaced the dollar’s dominance in credit markets,» he said in August 2019. «By reducing the influence of the US on the global financial cycle, this would help reduce the volatility of capital flows to EMEs.»

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This week

Friday

• 17:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. ET) The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will hold the latest of its crypto roundtables, this time focusing on custody issues.

Elsewhere:

• (The New York Times) Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had another group chat where he shared details about an impending military strike in Yemen. Unlike the Signal chat which included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Hegseth himself set this group up, and included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, the Times reported. NBC later reported that the information about the strike came from a message sent by an Army general through «a secure U.S. government system.»
• (Reuters) The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation plans to lay off a fifth of its employees, or 1,250 people, it told its staff according to Reuters.
• (AP News) The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it would lay off 1,500 employees, but this move has been paused by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
• (The New York Times) Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat representing Maryland, met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully sent to El Salvador to be imprisoned without a trial or hearing, and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s administration tried to stage the photos of his meeting with Van Hollen by placing glasses «with cherries and salted rims» for photos, the Times reported.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!

The crypto market’s rally stalled on Wednesday after U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent reiterated that a proper trade deal between Washington and Beijing would take years to ink out.

Bitcoin (BTC) is up 2.6% in the last 24 hours and 12.2% in the last seven days, trading at $93,600 for the first time since the beginning of March. The largest cryptocurrency was outperformed by large swaths of the market, with the CoinDesk 20 — an index of the top 20 coins, excluding stablecoins, memecoins and exchange tokens — rose 4.2% in the last 24 hours. Sui (SUI) jumped 24% in that period of time, while Cardano’s ADA and Chainlink’s LINK both saw 7% gains.

Crypto stocks, which opened strong, saw their performance dampen as the day unfolded. Miners such as Bitdeer (BTDR) and Core Scientific (CORZ) fell back from double-digit gains, closing the day up roughly 4%. Coinbase (COIN) and Strategy (MSTR) are up 2.1% and 1.4%, respectively.

U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to be dialing down the pressure on China in the last few days, saying that tariffs on the Middle Kingdom would “come down substantially” on Tuesday. Bessent, however, said on Wednesday that the White House had not made a unilateral offer to cut tariffs on China, and that a deal between the two nations would take two to three years to achieve.

«A meaningful thaw in relations may not materialize until substantive news emerges from the upcoming Xi-Trump meeting,» said Paul Howard, director at crypto trading firm Wincent. Markets priced in the initial tough stances and tariff threats, which kept a lid on risk appetite over the past two months, he said.

«History suggests that once the opening volleys pass, more constructive developments and easing volatility typically follow,» Howard said, which could support risk assets such as crypto.

BTC ETF flows return

In a sign of renewed investor demand, U.S.-listed spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded nearly $1.3 billion in net inflows this week so far, according to SoSoValue data. The funds booked their strongest day on Tuesday since mid-January.

«This [crypto] rally isn’t retail-driven hype—it’s institutional capital positioning ahead of what many see as a new monetary and political regime,» said Matt Mena, crypto research strategist at digital asset manager 21Shares. «More investors are turning to it not just as a speculative asset, but as a flight to safety amid rising uncertainty across traditional markets.»

Despite the strong price action, Mena added that BTC is facing resistance at around the $95,000 level in the short term and could pull back.

Bitcoin to catch up to gold

Gold, meanwhile, is down 2.5% today, trading at $3,290 per ounce after a run that saw the precious metal rise 35% to $3,500 in the span of four months, possibly hinting that the market could be moving past peak uncertainty.

Gold stalling after a massive rally could bode well for bitcoin, said Charles Edwards, founder of bitcoin-focused hedge fund Capriole Investments. Posting a chart on X on Wednesday, he noted that BTC historically followed gold’s gains with a few-month lag.

«Bitcoin is showing significant strength,» Edwards said in an X post. «We have decoupled from risk assets and the market is now starting to front-run the fact that bitcoin is digital gold. If risk assets were to decay further from here, BTC is the ultimate QE [quantitative easing] hedge.»

Read more: Bitcoin Breaches ‘Ichimoku Cloud’ to Flash Bullish Signal While Altcoins Lag: Technical Analysis

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the founder of now-defunct crypto and foreign exchange investment company PGI Global, with violating federal securities laws, alleging he ran a “Ponzi-like scheme” that defrauded investors of nearly $200 million — and spent $57 million of customer money on Lamborghinis, real estate and luxury goods.

Ramil Palafox, 59, of Las Vegas, Nevada, also faces parallel criminal charges tied to his role at PGI Global. In March, a Virginia grand jury charged him in a sprawling 23-count indictment that included eight counts of wire fraud. Due to what prosecutors described as Palafox’s “substantial ties” to the Philippines, including dual citizenship, the judge overseeing his criminal case issued an order on Tuesday that he should remain in custody until further notice.

According to court documents, PGI Global was a crypto investment scheme that ran from January 2020 to October 2021. Approximately 90,000 investors around the world purchased membership packages with either bitcoin or fiat currency that promised hefty returns on their investments — up to 3% daily and a 200% total return. But instead of actually investing his clients’ money, prosecutors say Palafox spent over a quarter of the funds unjustly enriching himself and his family members, and used the rest to pay back earlier investors in the scheme until it collapsed.

“Palafox used the guise of innovation to lure investors into lining his pockets with millions of dollars while leaving many victims empty-handed,” said Laura D’Allaird, chief of the SEC’s new Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, in a press statement. “In reality, his false claims of crypto industry expertise and a supposed AI-powered auto-trading platform were just masking an international securities fraud.”

Since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in January, the SEC has overhauled its approach to crypto regulation, dropping investigations and some litigation against crypto companies tied to purported securities violations. But despite its about-face on the so-called “regulation-by-enforcement” practiced during former Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure, the SEC has promised that it will continue to go after crypto-related securities fraud.

Similarly, the DOJ has narrowed its approach to crypto-related prosecution, disbanding its crypto task force and instructing staff not to criminally charge regulatory violations in cases involving crypto. In a memo to staff last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told prosecutors to focus their efforts on going after “individuals who victimize digital asset investors.”

In Palafox’s case, the SEC is aiming to get investors’ money back, plus interest and civil penalties, as well as get injunctive relief that would prevent him from similar crimes in the future. The SEC is also seeking to get money back from several of Palafox’s family members, including his wife, Marissa Mendoza Palafox, and his brother-in-law, Darvie Mendoza.

In a submission to the court, the DOJ has said that Palafox — if found guilty — is facing “at least 108-135 months’ imprisonment,” or 9 to 11 years.

Palafox’s lawyer declined to comment.