America is the buck-wild cryptoland now. Canada will have to live with that

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Timing was not on Changpeng Zhao’s side. The founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and a Canadian, Mr. Zhao had faced a money-laundering charge under the Biden-era Justice Department. He made a deal for four months in prison.

If only events had dragged on for a little.

On Jan. 21, one day after inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned a crypto criminal who had done far worse than Mr. Zhao: Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a divisive life sentence over his operation of the Silk Road darknet marketplace. Silk Road did business in bitcoin – one of the earliest use cases of the cryptocurrency – and Mr. Ulbricht had become a cause célèbre in certain circles.

Mr. Ulbricht’s pardon set the tone for the Trump administration’s approach to crypto. Mr. Zhao has now applied for a pardon, too.

We must keep this in mind as we consider the big week crypto is having. U.S. lawmakers are holding hearings for three crypto bills, including the Genius Act, that are expected to boost the industry. Bitcoin, a sort-of benchmark for the industry, has shot up to more than US$120,000, a new all-time high.

Crypto industry pushing Canada to follow U.S. lead in embracing stablecoins

These are important developments – complex, technical and worth a lot of money to many people. But underneath it all is base human nature and all the oddities that entails.

During his first term, Mr. Trump said: “I am not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”

Then Mr. Trump saw crypto increasingly embraced by people on the political right. Don’t ask why. It shouldn’t be partisan at all. But like gas stoves, bike lanes and Bud Light, crypto has become a hot item in the raging culture war of our times. Last year, Mr. Trump campaigned at a bitcoin conference, and the industry donated heavily to him.

Under Mr. Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission ended its civil enforcements against giants Coinbase, Kraken and, of course, Mr. Zhao’s Binance. The SEC moved to settle its case against Ripple, another big crypto name. The Justice Department shifted focus from white-collar crypto regulatory breaches to cases involving fraud or terrorism.

With that, the line lengthens for people seeking pardons. It’s not just Mr. Zhao. Sam Bankman-Fried, the fraudster at the heart of the FTX saga, has joined. So has Virgil Griffith, recently out of prison after giving a crypto talk in North Korea. Roger Ver, the so-called “bitcoin Jesus” accused of not paying US$50-million in capital gains taxes, is lobbying to change the relevant law.

And so here we are at the U.S. crypto bills. The most notable among them, the Genius Act, provides a regulatory framework for stablecoins. These are cryptocurrencies whose value is fixed to an underlying asset and they are considered a backbone to the ecosystem. The bill grants legitimacy to the sector, paving the way for it to become further integrated in mainstream finance.

Crypto companies have a long history of avoiding the United States because of harsh enforcement. Now that time is set to be over. “If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” Mr. Trump said last year when he campaigned at a bitcoin conference.

The market certainly likes that. Bitcoin’s rise to more than US$120,000 this week is all the more astounding given that, historically, this is the time in the life cycle when we should be entering a bear market.

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This puts Canada in stark contrast. This was the home of ethereum, arguably the biggest thing in crypto after bitcoin. This was home to the world’s first bitcoin automated banking machine, or as the Americans call it, an ATM. This was, of course, also the home of Mr. Zhao of Binance.

Today Canada, despite having a few plucky upstarts, is also overserved by a few branch plants of international crypto companies. Some of those branch plants have even abandoned us due to what critics called onerous regulations.

“2024 was a lacklustre year for Canadian crypto,” lawyers at McCarthy Tétrault have written, saying that Canadian regulators “imposed additional product restrictions, raised barriers to entry and did not approve any new crypto products.” The crypto industry here is dull and muted compared to that of the U.S., and judging by how the year is going, it is set to remain so.

This might remind you of our banking system. Canadian big banks must maintain higher reserves compared to American ones, and there are greater barriers to entry here. We have less innovation, less competition and higher fees. But we also have had only a handful of bank failures compared to 570 in the U.S. from 2001 to 2025. Our regulators have prized stability over growth.

Whether that is a good thing or not depends on who you ask. But history does show you can pick only one. Do you want to be the roaring, buck-wild boomtown? Or do you want to be the peaceful land with a quiet people?

The U.S. has made its choice, and so has Canada.