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

IMF Seminar (On-demand): Digital Money Revolution

October 19, 2021

IMF Annual Meetings (2021 Washington DC)| Oct 18, 2021 Overview of IMF Seminar 'Digital Money Revolution' Digital finance innovations—central bank digital currencies, private eMoney, stable coins, or cryptoassets—may bring changes in the way we lead our lives. This seminar reviews the implications of this transformation for the international monetary system. See:  The Impact of Fintech on Central Bank Governance Moderator:  Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. Speakers: Kristalina Georgieva is the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Benoît Cœuré was appointed Head of the BIS Innovation Hub in 2020. Eswar Prasad is the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. 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, ...
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Canadian securities regulators seek comment on climate-related disclosure requirements

October 18, 2021

CSA | Release | Oct 18, 2021 Calgary and Toronto – The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) today published for comment proposed climate-related disclosure requirements. The proposed requirements address the need for more consistent and comparable information to help inform investment decisions. They also demonstrate the CSA’s commitment in favour of the growing international movement toward mandatory climate-related disclosure standards. The requirements contemplate disclosure largely consistent with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations. They will improve the comparability of the information issuers disclose and help investors make more informed investment decisions by enhancing climate-related disclosure. The requirements are also intended to address costs associated with reporting across multiple disclosure frameworks, improve access to global markets and facilitate an equal playing field for issuers. See:  The evolution of ESG: Corporate sustainability leaders in the financial services sector are taking on new responsibilities “We recognize some issuers already share certain climate-related information,” said Louis Morisset, CSA Chair and President and CEO of the Autorité des marchés financiers. “Our proposed requirements will bring those disclosures into a harmonized framework benefitting investors and issuers alike and aligning Canadian capital markets with the global movement towards consistent and comparable standards.” The proposed requirements ...
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Foreign property tax implications associated with owning cryptocurrencies

October 18, 2021

Financial Post | Jamie Golombek | 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 ...
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CFTC fines Tether US$41M for misleading claims about currency backing

October 18, 2021

Bloomberg | Jesse Westbrook | Oct 15, 2021 Tether will pay US$41 million to settle allegations it lied in claiming its digital tokens were fully backed by fiat currencies, putting a major compliance headache behind the world’s biggest issuer of stablecoins even as regulatory scrutiny intensifies. For years, Tether told customers and the broader cryptocurrency market that it had US$1 in reserve to back every token, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a Friday statement. That claim was wildly misleading, according to the agency. For instance, from June to September 2017, there was never more than US$61.5 million backing Tether, even as more 442 million coins were circulating at one point. Read:  Tether banned on Canada’s first 2 licensed digital currency exchanges “This case highlights the expectation of honesty and transparency in the rapidly growing and developing digital assets marketplace,” said acting CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam. Tether is widely used to trade Bitcoin and other tokens, making it pivotal to the crypto market. That’s because the coin allows quick transactions and because it’s designed to be largely immune to volatile price swings -- a function of its one-to-one peg to fiat currencies. But many traders have long been skeptical ...
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First American bitcoin ETF (ProShares Trust) looks set to debut Tuesday

October 18, 2021

MarketWatch | Mark DeCambre | Oct 18, 2021 ProShares looked set to offer the first bitcoin exchange-traded fund, marking a major milestone in the crypto sector as digital assets gain greater mainstream adoption. The fund provider submitted an amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday for a bitcoin futures ETF that set the table for a launch soon, said Todd Rosenbluth, head of ETF and mutual fund research at CFRA, in a phone interview. See:  Bitcoin ETF option gives investors a safer and liquid way to get exposure The filing for the Bitcoin Strategy ETF points to a rollout of the fund on Tuesday. The new ETF would end a yearslong push for a approval of a bitcoin ETF that started back in 2013 and has seen scores of applications rejected by the SEC. Anticipation had been building for a bitcoin futures ETF after SEC Chairman Gary Gensler earlier this year said he supported such a structure, which he argues offers more investor protections than an ETF that is tied directly to physical bitcoin. Bitcoin has seen its price surge in anticipation of the ETF, with the value of the world’s No. 1 crypto above $61,000 up ...
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MintGreen to make North Vancouver world’s first city heated by bitcoin

October 18, 2021

Vancouver Tech Journal | William Johnson | Oct 14, 2021 Bitcoin mining company MintGreen to deliver innovative low-carbon mining waste solution to heat City of North Vancouver. As part of an effort to reduce its urban carbon footprint, the City of North Vancouver and Lonsdale Energy Corporation (LEC), its district energy utility, will be introducing a novel heat source to their district energy system. MintGreen, a Burnaby-based cleantech cryptocurrency miner, will be working with LEC to provide heat to North Vancouver from bitcoin mining. How will this work? Bitcoin mining facilities produce significant amounts of heat, which until recently, would have been considered an undesirable output. To combat this, miners have gone so far as to invest in venting and cooling infrastructure to remove this heat. MintGreen, however, has built a proprietary solution to capture this heat and sell it to buyers of heat See:  El Salvador taps renewable energy from volcanoes to start mining bitcoin MintGreen calls this tech their “Digital Boilers” and says it can recover more than 96% of the electricity used for bitcoin mining in the form of heat energy that can be used to sustainably heat communities and service industrial processes. Because cryptocurrency miners run ...
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Bitcoin’s mystery man turns up in the law courts

October 15, 2021

The Law Society Gazette | | Michael Cross | Oct 14, 2021 As far as his acolytes are concerned, the ministry on earth of Satoshi Nakamoto lasted just over two years. During that time, from the end of 2008, ‘he’ - Satoshi is a male given name - published a brilliantly written white paper setting out the principles of a currency that could operate without a central authority. He also released the computer code to turn Bitcoin in to practice (written in the programming language C++) and engaged in web conversations about its debugging and development. The last public comment appeared in December 2010. Email exchanges with developers continued for a few months, but then Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared without trace. 'I’ve moved on to other things,' he wrote in April 2011. His, or their, identity remains a mystery. See:  Privacy laws might prove to be a blessing in disguise for crypto At least that is the widely accepted version of history among the mixture of geniuses, visionaries, hard-headed entrepreneurs, gullible punters and outright rogues who make up the global Bitcoin community. However a series of actions in the English courts could rewrite the authorised version. They are being brought by ...
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The Real Story of Access to Capital

October 15, 2021

SEC | Martha Miller | Oct 13, 2021 If you’re taking in news by simply scanning the headlines—particularly those about capital raising activity—you’ve likely missed the story for some splashy titles. Today I’d like to delve into the story and facts behind the headlines about how entrepreneurs are raising capital from investors, deconstructing some of the big numbers we see in large print. “Entrepreneurs Should Quit Their Day Jobs; Paychecks are Irrelevant” Many assume that unless an entrepreneur is focused on their startup 100%, they’re not truly dedicated. The reality for most entrepreneurs is that sticking with their day job before their side hustle has been de-risked is not only a smart financial decision, but often a necessary one. Our Office regularly hears from minority and women entrepreneurs who talk about building their companies while maintaining a stable income stream to support their families, pay off student debt, and avoid taking on too much dilutive capital too early. Their decision is a smart one. Entrepreneurs who keep their day jobs while building their businesses are 1/3 less likely to fail than those who quit and go all in from the beginning. Wharton Professor and author Adam Grant attributes this phenomenon ...
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Gen Z VCs are entrepreneurial, digitally native, values-focused

October 15, 2021

AngelList | Matthew Speiser | Oct 8, 2021 “The barriers to entrepreneurship and investing have never been lower, and our generation is very aware of the opportunity we have.” See:  Why is venture capital still ignoring women? The case for investing is clear. Gen Z has become the target market for many new businesses—and founders and venture firms want to work with them. Hence the rise of Gen Z VCs, an online community where young investors swap knowledge and deal flow. Gen Z VCs has grown to 10k members since launching in November 2020. “Gen Z is unique in that we’re entrepreneurial, digitally native, values-focused, and we don’t accept the status quo,” said Meagan Loyst, the 24-year-old founder of Gen Z VCs and an early-stage investor at Lerer Hippeau. Leveraging Personal Brands “More so than previous generations, Gen Zers are really great at building their brand, and that’s something that’s helped me a lot personally,” said Chang. “The whole pre-seed and seed space is about who you know, and if founders know you because of your brand, it can go a long way towards earning an allocation.” “I think we owe some of our success to the fact that more ...
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Speech by Jon Cunliffe: ‘Is crypto a financial stability risk’?

October 14, 2021

Bank of England | Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor, Financial Stability | Oct 13, 2021 Jon Cunliffe's Speech Overview delivered at Sibos:  Jon Cunliffe looks at the impact of ‘crypto’ on the stability of the UK’s financial system.  He says unbacked crypto-assets (eg Bitcoin) and backed crypto-assets for payments (stablecoins) have begun to connect to the financial system. And he talks about how regulators are responding to their rapid growth. I want to talk today about whether the world of ‘crypto finance’ poses risks to financial stability. Cryptoassets have grown by roughly 200% in 2021, from just under $800 billion to $2.3 trillion today. They have grown from just $16 billion 5 years ago. $2.3 trillion of course needs to be seen in the context of the $250 trillion global financial system. But as the financial crisis showed us, you don’t have to account for a large proportion of the financial sector to trigger financial stability problems – sub-prime was valued at around $1.2 trillion in 2008. See:  Moody’s says Crypto regulation a plus for banks, fintechs Task Force on Financial Stability: Report release When something in the financial system is growing very fast, and growing in largely unregulated space, financial stability ...
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