'A lot of the bad actors have been shaken out of the market' — Bitvo CEO

cointelegraph.com:

Pamela Draper, president and CEO of crypto platform Bitvo, has weighed in on firms escaping the Canadian market amid the regulatory environment.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Collision Conference in Toronto on June 29, Draper said despite crypto companies like Binance, dYdX, and Bybit announcing their departure from Canada in 2023, the country was “one of the few jurisdictions where there’s actually a regulatory regime in place that you can follow.” She cited cases in the United States, where Binance and Coinbase both face lawsuits from the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

“At least in Canada you have a framework you can follow where you know the guidelines,” said Draper. “You may not necessarily agree with every single aspect of it, but you know the sandbox.”

She added that certain firms with operations in other countries may not be willing to “make the investment” in Canada amid the regulatory framework. Canadian regulators imposed requirements in 2021 giving crypto firms two years to register as an “investment dealer” or “regulated marketplace”, with the expectation they would be in compliance in 2023.

In June 2022, now-defunct crypto exchange FTX announced plans to purchase Bitvo as part of its move into Canada. The deal fell apart in November when FTX declared bankruptcy and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was subsequently arrested in the Bahamas.

Related: How security, education and regulation can mitigate rising crypto scams

According to Draper, she initially wasn’t concerned about the reports involving FTX’s liquidity in early November 2022 because many saw the exchange as the “poster child for pushing regulation forward”. She cited a $400-million funding round for FTX, maintaining the firm’s