Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) has topped $1 billion – five years after the securities exemption became actionable for issuers in need of growth capital.
Where, exactly, is your cryptocurrency located? It's complicated
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Research
Reg CF: Investment Crowdfunding Tops $1 Billion on Heals of Funding Cap Increase
Crowdfund Insider | | Oct 26, 2021
Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) has topped $1 billion – five years after the securities exemption became actionable for issuers in need of growth capital.
According to Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA), 1.2+ million investors have backed over 4500 companies to achieve this milestone.
The third quarter of 2021 was said to be the best quarter ever with approximately $148 million committed to issuers raising capital on funding portals or regulated broker dealers.
See: Reg CF Update: Interview with Sherwood Neiss on Investment Crowdfunding
This amount was 93% greater than the same quarter last year and 12.5% over Q2. The third quarter broke the record of number of offerings pegged at around 400 securities sales.
Year to date as of Q3, approximately $409 million has been raised with 1,177 individual offerings.
Software was the most popular industry to raise money using the exemption.
The top five platforms during Q3 dominated the sector of online capital formation accounting for around 88% of investment activity.
CCA noted that Reg CF activity helped to create more than 17,000 jobs during the quarter.
See:
Doug Ellenoff on US Reg CF Increasing Issuer Caps to $5 million: Investment Crowdfunding Will Challenge Traditional Venture Capital
Canadian securities regulators adopt new nationally harmonized start-up crowdfunding rules
This sector of crowdfunding received a significant boost in March of 2021 when the Securities and Exchange Commission made several material changes to the securities exemption. Perhaps the most important change was boosting the funding cap from $1.07 million to $5 million thus making the exemption more viable for a broader range of early-stage firms.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Foreign property tax implications associated with owning cryptocurrencies
Financial Post | | Oct 14, 2021
Where, exactly, is your cryptocurrency located? It's complicated
If you hold foreign property whose total cost exceeds $100,000 at any point in a tax year, you’re required to file Form T1135. The form covers the obvious things, such as your Swiss bank account or Cayman offshore investment portfolio, but it’s also required for foreign stocks, such as Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. or Google owner Alphabet Inc., that are held in a Canadian, non-registered brokerage account.
The penalty for filing late is $25 per day to a maximum of $2,500, plus arrears interest. There have been at least 20 reported cases in which taxpayers have been assessed a late-filing penalty since the 1998 introduction of Form T1135.
Is cryptocurrency considered foreign property?
Those questions were discussed in a recent article by William Musani and Ashvin Singh of Felesky Flynn LLP, a boutique tax law firm with offices in Alberta and Saskatchewan. They analyzed whether cryptocurrency falls under the technical definition of “specified foreign property” in the Income Tax Act, which includes “intangible property situated, deposited, or held outside Canada that is not used or held exclusively in the course of carrying on an active business of the taxpayer.”
Back in 2015, the CRA stated that “digital currency would be funds or intangible property and would be specified foreign property of a person or partnership to the extent that it is situated, deposited or held outside of Canada.”
See: Proposed Amendments to the GST/HST Treatment of Cryptocurrencies
But where, exactly, is your cryptocurrency located?
In practice, an entitlement to your cryptocurrency exists in the form of a digital ledger on the related blockchain. But because it’s stored on a blockchain, it can simultaneously exist in several geographic locations.
These digital ledgers are considered both “distributed” and “decentralized” databases. The database that records the entitlements of a cryptocurrency holder is stored and updated in many locations at once — that is, distributed — which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to manipulate its records. The ledgers are also decentralized, since no single distributed database is the sole source of the true ownership of the particular cryptocurrency.
The article’s authors argue that in relation to the location of your cryptocurrency holdings:
The geographic location of your private key is “arguably the most relevant factor in determining where such cryptocurrency is situated, deposited, or held for the purposes of the act.”
See: Miami mayor says the city is moving toward paying public employees in bitcoin
But the answer to this may depend on whether you are using a “hot” or “cold” digital wallet. Hot wallets are digital wallets connected to the internet, which is how nearly all cryptocurrency exchanges or online providers store your cryptocurrency.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI): China’s crackdown puts US in pole position and Canada in 4th
Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance | Michel Rauchs | Oct 13, 2021
Source: Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CCAF)
The latest update to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) has confirmed the impact of the Bitcoin mining crackdown in China, showing that the leading share of global Bitcoin network hashrate now sits in the US, followed by Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.
See: How This Billionaire-Backed Crypto Startup Gets Paid To Not Mine Bitcoin
This new data (to the end of August 2021) shows the US with a global hashrate share of 35.4% (up from 16.8% at the end of April), Kazakhstan with 18.1% (up from 8.2%) and the Russian Federation with 11% (up from 6.8%). This confirms the hashrate trajectory identified in the last update (to end April 2021) which showed those three countries were already gaining market share prior to the crackdown in China.
The immediate effect of the government-mandated ban on crypto mining in China was a 38% drop in global network hashrate in June 2021 – which corresponds roughly to China’s share of hashrate before the clampdown, suggesting that Chinese miners ceased operations simultaneously. New data reported by partnering mining pools BTC.com, Poolin, ViaBTC, and Foundry confirms this observation: declared mining operations in mainland China have effectively dropped to zero, from a high of 75.53% of the world’s total Bitcoin mining in September 2019 when this data was first recorded.
That initial 38% drop in global hashrate in June was partially offset by a 20% “bounceback” over July and August, suggesting that some Chinese mining equipment has been successfully redeployed overseas.
Further, as of early October, the hashrate trajectory is indicating that all, or nearly all, of that June downturn would be fully recovered soon. If the August data updates are an indication for the future, then that recovery will likely be further distributed predominantly between the largest share gainers – US, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.
See: El Salvador taps renewable energy from volcanoes to start mining bitcoin
Outside of the top three, the next largest hashrate shares are Canada (9.55%), Ireland (4.68%), Malaysia (4.59%), Germany (4.48%), Iran (3.11%) and Norway (0.58%), followed by a long tail of countries.
The effect of the Chinese crackdown is an increased geographic distribution of hashrate across the world, which can be considered a positive development for network security and the decentralised principles of Bitcoin.
It is worth noting that the shares for Ireland and Germany are likely due to a growing number of miners rerouting through those countries via VPNs or proxy servers, rather than growing mining activity for which there is little or no evidence.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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2021 McKinsey Global Payments Report
McKinsey & Company | Philip Bruno, Olivier Denecker, and Marc Niederkorn | Oct 7, 2021
Undoubtedly, 2020 was a tumultuous year on many levels. Payments was no exception—the sector experienced its first revenue contraction in 11 years, a consequence of the economic slowdown that accompanied the global health crisis of COVID-19. Still, government and regulatory measures such as fiscal and monetary stimulus held the decline below the 7 percent we projected in last year’s report. 1 At the same time, the continued digitization of commercial and consumer transactions contributed even greater upward momentum than expected.
See:
Swift launches ‘Go’ moves into low value cross-border payments
Interac and many of Canada’s leading financial institutions enhance Interac e-Transfer to introduce instant digital payments for businesses
Global payment revenues totaled $1.9 trillion in 2020, a 5 percent decline from 2019 (Exhibit 1), as compared to the 7 percent growth rate observed between 2014 and 2019. This result seems fairly intuitive on the surface; a granular analysis, however, reveals a series of often offsetting trends. Overall, the payments industry proved remarkably resilient to drastic economic changes even as many economies spent significant portions of the year in lockdown.
Looking forward, we see a handful of primary drivers influencing the payments revenue trajectory. On the one hand, continued cash displacement and a return to global economic growth will accelerate existing upward trends in the share and number of electronic transactions. On the other, interest margins will likely remain muted. Sustained softness in this key topline contributor will create greater incentive for payments players to pursue new fee-driven revenue sources and to expand beyond their traditional focus to adjacent areas such as commerce facilitation and identity services.
Given the above assumptions we expect global payments revenues to quickly return to their long-term 6 to 7 percent growth trajectory, recouping 2020’s declines in 2021 and reaching roughly $2.5 trillion by 2025. More importantly, however, as “payments” become further absorbed into commercial and consumer commerce journeys, established payments providers will gain access to adjacent opportunities as large as the core payments revenue pool. Of course, an opportunity of this magnitude draws attention—tech firms and ecosystem competitors are already focusing on these attractive (and often less regulated) elements of the payments value chain, rather than traditional interchange, acquiring, and transaction fees linked to payment flows.
See:
Amazon Responds To Rumors That It Is Integrating Bitcoin Payments On Its Platform
65% of Global banking executives see branch-based models dead in 5 years
Payments without banks goes mainstream with Twitter on Bitcoin Lightning Network
Select Highlights:
- Asia-Pacific dominates the global payments revenue pool
- Cross-border payments, a natural casualty of reduced travel and global supply chain challenges, accounted for the remainder of the revenue decline. By contrast, the explosion in e-commerce and reduction in cash usage helped minimize the decline in domestic transaction fee income.
- The pandemic reinforced major shifts in payments behavior: declining cash usage, migration from in-store to online commerce, adoption of instant payments.
- Cash payments declined by 16 percent globally in 2020
- Digital-wallet usage surged, as consumer preferences evolved even within contactless forms. In Australia, an early success story in “tap to pay” adoption, digital-wallet transactions grew 90 percent from March 2020 to March 2021—by which point 40 percent of combined debit/credit contactless volume originated via digital wallets. In Indonesia, the value of e-money transactions grew by nearly 39 percent between 2019 and 2020, fueled primarily by an increase in digital adoption.
- Real-time payments are playing an increasingly important role in the global payments ecosystem, with the number of such transactions soaring by 41 percent in 2020 alone, often in support of contactless/wallets and e-commerce. 4 Over the last year growth in instant payments varied widely across countries—from Singapore at 58 percent to the United Kingdom at 17 percent.
- The push for digital identity verification systems gained momentum during the pandemic, both as a facilitator for expanding e-commerce volumes and as a means for governments to rapidly disburse welfare and other social payments.
Continue to the full article --> here
Download the McKinsey 2021 Global Payments Report --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Kraken Report: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): Redefining Digital Scarcity
Kraken Blog | Sep 30, 2021
Non-Fungible Tokens are perhaps the most exciting development in crypto this year. While many believe the future of NFTs to be bright, few understand their value and potential. To separate hype from hard facts, Kraken Intelligence has compiled an in-depth report outlining what they are, how they work, and why they’re valuable.
Download “Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): Redefining Digital Scarcity” to learn why celebrities, sports teams and even corporations like Visa are diving head-first into this technological innovation that enables provable, verifiable ownership of everything from graphic art, to music, to real estate.
Owning and Storing NFTs
After a collection is entirely minted, most NFTs are typically available for purchase on secondary markets. Most corresponding content or art is likely stored off-chain to reduce costs and some creators may store it in a centralized server — which could increase the risk of a dead link to the NFT should the server fail or shut down.
See: Twitch streamer clips, an NFT marketplace backed by Mark Cuban and Coinbase
What Makes NFTs Valuable
There are many factors that contribute to the value of NFTs. Value can be attributed to immutable ownership, digital scarcity and smart-contract-based governance. No matter how much time passes, an NFT’s history can be authenticated and it can not be duplicated.
Supplementary value lies in their ability to be utilized across applications and frictionless transfer via a secondary market. As barriers between content creators and their audience are removed, NFTs can disintermediate media platforms who monetize content at their discretion. This development can further empower the creator economy.
Continue to the full article --> here
Download the 35 page report on NFTs Digital Scarcity --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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OECD Report: AI in Business and Finance – 2021 Outlook
OECD Library | Oct 5, 2021
Source: OECD Library
Deployment of AI applications across the full spectrum of finance and business sectors has progressed rapidly in recent years such that these applications have become or are on their way to becoming mainstream. AI, i.e. machine-based systems able to make predictions, recommendations or decisions based on machine or human input for a given set of objectives, is being applied in digital platforms and in sectors ranging from health care to agriculture.
See: Sustainable finance linked bonds and loans in the capital markets
It is also transforming financial services. In 2020 alone, financial markets witnessed a global spend of over USD 50 billion in AI, and a total investment in AI venture capital of over USD 4 billion worldwide, accompanied by a boom in the number of AI research publications and in the supply of AI job skills.
AI applications offer remarkable opportunities for businesses, investors, consumers and regulators. AI can facilitate transactions, enhance market efficiency, reinforce financial stability, promote greater financial inclusion and improve customer experience. Banks, traders, insurance firms and asset managers increasingly use AI to generate efficiencies by reducing friction costs and improving productivity levels. Increased automation and advances in “deep learning” can help financial service providers assess risk quickly and more accurately. Better forecasting of demand fluctuations through data analytics can help to avoid shortages and overproduction. Consumers also have increased access to financial services and support thanks to AI-powered online customer service tools like “chat-bots”, credit scoring, “robo-advice” and claims management.
As AI applications become increasingly integrated into business and finance, the use of trustworthy AI becomes more important for ensuring trustworthy financial markets. Increasing complexity of AI-powered applications in the financial sector, as well as the functions supported by AI technologies, pose risks to fairness, transparency, and the stability of financial markets that current regulatory frameworks may not adequately address. Appropriate and transparent designs and uses of AI-powered applications are essential to ensuring these risks are managed, including risks to consumer protection and trust, as well as AI’s ability to introduce systemic risk for the sector.
Explainability, transparency, accountability and robust data management practices are key to trustworthy AI in the financial sector. Explaining how AI algorithms reach decisions and other outcomes is an essential ingredient of fostering trust and accountability for AI applications. Outcomes of AI algorithms are often unexplainable, however, which presents a conundrum: the complexity of AI models that can hold the key to great advances in performance is also a crucial challenge for building trust and accountability.
Read: Synthetic Media and Deepfakes: An insurance industry threat
Transparency is another key determinant of trustworthy AI. Market participants should be able to know when AI is being used and how it is being developed and operated in order to promote accountability and help minimise the risks of unintended bias and discrimination in AI outcomes. Data quality and governance are also critical as the inappropriate use of data in AI-powered applications and the use of inadequate data can undermine trust in AI outcomes. Failing to foster these key qualities in AI systems could lead to the introduction of biases generating discriminatory and unfair results, market convergence and herding behaviour or the concentration of markets by dominant players, among other outcomes, which can all undermine market integrity and stability.
View the OECD AI in Business and Finance 2021 Report Online --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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First Time Ever, Grayscale’s Top Crypto Investment Product is Ethereum Trust. Institutional Shift?
The Daily Hodl | Oct 2, 2021
A new study from a digital asset analytics firm is revealing that institutional investors are moving away from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) in favor of another crypto asset trading product.
According to a CryptoCompare report, Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) witnessed more daily trading volumes in September than GBTC for the first time in history.
Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) was the most traded digital asset product in September – with average daily volumes increasing 29.0% to $250 million (42.4% market share) – dethroning Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) for the first time ever.”
See: More Ethereum Has Been Burned Than Minted in the Past 24 Hours
The study also highlights that the total assets under management (AUM) in Bitcoin-based products fell to new lows in September while Ethereum’s market share peaked as investors diversify their crypto portfolio.
“AUM in Bitcoin-based products fell 7.8% in September to $35.1 billion (67.9% of current total AUM – the lowest share this year since April at 78.3%). On the other hand, Ethereum-based products reached their highest market share of AUM at 25.9%, following a 3.0% decrease to $13.5 billion. This movement suggests that investors are seeking alternatives to Bitcoin for cryptocurrency exposure.”
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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