Canada's crypto industry taking lessons from U.S. election wins

financialpost.com:

Following the high-profile successes of the crypto industry in last year’s United States elections, digital-asset companies in Canada are already applying what they’ve learned.

In November, Donald Trump, a crypto skeptic turned supporter, won the U.S. presidential election and pro-crypto candidates won the majority of their races. Since then, Trump has nominated digital-asset supporters to his administration and Bitcoin’s price has surged more than 40 per cent, rising above US$100,000 for the first time.

Crypto became a large topic in the U.S. election due in part to the roughly US$135 million the industry spent backing candidates. Crypto’s Fairshake political action committee and its affiliated super-PACs were funded by industry heavyweights such as Coinbase, Ripple Labs and Andreessen Horowitz.

North of the border, crypto hasn’t been as big of a topic among politicians, but the industry hopes that will change.

In Canada’s political system, companies can’t donate to election campaigns and individual donations for 2025 are capped at $1,750 to each political party and $1,750 in total for all candidates of each party. Even with these restrictions, the Canadian industry is still making progress since November.

“Conversations are easier to start today than they were over a month ago, and I think that trend will likely continue regardless of the donations,” said Dean Skurka, chief executive of Toronto-based WonderFi Technologies Inc.

Advocacy organization Stand With Crypto also helped make the topic a prominent U.S. election issue, with industry partners like Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini. The campaign launched in 2023 and endorsed candidates in the U.S. election with the aim of getting its 1.9 million supporters to advocate