Canada’s financial supervision agency issues a new notice on ICOs

Businesses should think on how their cryptocurrency trade schemes apply to the description of a typical securities trade set by Canadian authorities and, to be more precise, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), a governmental body similar to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States.

The CSA has issued a 6-page document on the matter, where it demonstrates that it is going to regulate the ICOs and token sales just as they do with regular securities trading and provides a detailed description of conditions under which one’s business can be viewed as securities trading platform. Among those conditions is a typical “HQ in our country, customers in our country” policy – the regulations will apply if the company is based in Canada and/or has Canadian clients. This is, once again, very similar to how American financial regulators identify where it’s their job to regulate and where it’s not.

The regulators of Canada, acknowledging that businesses may vary, offer any firm that plans to sell tokens to contact with them to discuss the details and determine whether or not this firm’s activities fall under Canadian securities laws jurisdiction:

“In order to avoid costly regulatory surprises, we encourage businesses with proposed cryptocurrency offerings to contact their local securities regulatory authority to discuss possible approaches to complying with securities laws.”