{"id":138918,"date":"2026-07-22T00:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/138918\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T00:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:31:09","slug":"coinbase-canada-seeks-to-build-everything-exchange-as-new-ceo-plans-first-crypto-futures-offering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/138918\/","title":{"rendered":"Coinbase Canada seeks to build \u2018everything exchange\u2019 as new CEO plans first crypto futures offering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Coinbase CEO Eric Richmond says the company\u2019s goal is to offer Canadians a single platform to manage financial assets, not just crypto.Keito Newman\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Coinbase Canada Inc. is vying to be the first platform in the country to offer crypto derivatives trading, including futures contracts, as it looks to become an \u201ceverything exchange,\u201d its new chief executive said, while competition among fintech apps intensifies. <\/p>\n

Eric Richmond, who became Coinbase Canada\u2019s country director and CEO in June, said the company\u2019s goal is to offer Canadians a single platform to manage all sorts of financial assets, not just crypto. <\/p>\n

The company is seeking to obtain registration as a fully licensed securities dealer with the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization while expanding its services well beyond operating as a cryptocurrency exchange, Mr. Richmond told The Globe and Mail this week. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s currently among the biggest such platforms regulated in Canada, and part of Coinbase Global, Inc., which holds more than US$290-billion in assets. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy focus is really to grow the \u2018everything exchange\u2019 in Canada,\u201d Mr. Richmond said. \u201cHaving your financial experience all within one app that\u2019s underpinned by this new technology that makes things seamless, 24\/7, frictionless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company said it could not provide further details on other products it would introduce in Canada beyond derivatives trading such as crypto futures and commodity futures. In the U.S., Coinbase\u2019s push for an \u201ceverything exchange\u201d has included expanding the types of assets and trading available on the Coinbase app beyond crypto to traditional stocks and exchange-traded funds as well as prediction markets through a partnership with Kalshi. <\/p>\n

CIRO spokesperson Joanna Nicholson said the regulator is unable to comment on the specific registration or authorization status of individual dealer members. <\/p>\n

Mr. Richmond said Coinbase Canada hopes to open the door to crypto derivatives for eligible Canadians within the coming months. <\/p>\n

Opinion: From nothing bitcoin came, and to nothing it will return<\/a><\/p>\n

This type of trading, which involves speculating on the movement in price of a crypto asset such as bitcoin, faces regulatory hurdles, with major exchanges in Canada not offering them.<\/p>\n

Canadian Coinbase customers eligible under Canadian securities law would have access to contracts listed on the Coinbase Derivatives Exchange<\/a>, a U.S.-regulated exchange that is part of Coinbase Financial Markets. The exchange-traded futures listed on the CDE that would be available include both commodity futures and crypto futures. <\/p>\n

The rollout comes as competition intensifies among fintechs to draw Canadian users, particularly younger investors who turn to mobile apps to trade stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n

U.S. brokerage Robinhood Markets, Inc., for example, announced last month it was bringing its popular trading app to this country<\/a> after completing its acquisition of cryptocurrency company WonderFi Technologies Inc. <\/p>\n

It also follows millions in losses for Coinbase this year and last amid low crypto trading volumes and other market headwinds. <\/p>\n

While Coinbase in Canada is known primarily as a crypto exchange, \u201cwe are looking at something much broader than that,\u201d said Mr. Richmond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe things we\u2019re really turning our attention to \u2013 but it\u2019s still early days and we\u2019re still talking to regulators around this \u2013 is things like equities or derivatives,\u201d he said. \u201cProducts that Canadians can be excited about.\u201d <\/p>\n

New crypto trading services are entering Canada. Is that good for investors?<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to the broader state of the industry in Canada, Mr. Richmond, who previously was general counsel and head of business development at Shakepay and co-founded Canada\u2019s first regulated digital asset holder Tetra Trust, said that among his priorities will be working closely with regulators to clarify and codify rules that he says can make it hard for many to participate in the digital economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know what the rule book really is,\u201d he said of Canada\u2019s digital currencies landscape. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a lot of the entrepreneurs and investment here to operate here so I do think Canada has a little bit of catching up to do in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Richmond\u2019s predecessor, Lucas Matheson, who left the company last year to join Opendoor, was outspoken that Canada needed clear rules on stablecoins that classify them as payment tools instead of securities. <\/p>\n

While the federal government earlier this year released a new national framework for stablecoins, a type of crypto cash pegged one-to-one to a fiat currency such as the loonie or the U.S. dollar, most crypto trading has operated within the narrow and patchwork confinement of Canada\u2019s securities laws. This introduces administrative and transactional barriers that prevent digital assets from moving seamlessly like payments. <\/p>\n

Without straightforward rules, businesses in the space face prohibitively expensive legal costs before launching new digital asset projects, a process that drives capital and talent abroad, Mr. Richmond said. He cited Ethereum and Cosmos as two examples of Canadian-founded and co-founded blockchain projects that ultimately moved elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey moved to Switzerland because the rules were a little clearer there,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

And while he praised the speed of the federal government\u2019s progress in regulating digital assets such as stablecoins, he also said there\u2019s room for improvement when it comes to facets such as rewards, the likes of corporate loyalty dollars, interest or yield. The topic is contentious as critics have raised concerns that allowing interest payments to stablecoin holders, for example, could drain away deposits from Canadian banks<\/a>, hampering their ability to fund business and lending. <\/p>\n

Mr. Richmond said rewards can take many forms. \u201cTo me it just makes sense to pay that back to the end users,\u201d he said, adding that he hopes regulations will explicitly permit stablecoin issuers to offer those types of benefits to Canadian customers. <\/p>\n

With reports from Meera Raman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Coinbase CEO Eric Richmond says the company\u2019s goal is to offer Canadians a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,12458],"class_list":["post-138918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-pf-ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}