Bitbuy was formed in 2013 as a trading platform before it became a marketplace in November 2019 and merged the broker dealer business with a market infrastructure. Michael Arbus, Bitbuy's chief executive officer, told the Financial Post that the marketplace element sets them apart from other Canadian platforms that function solely as a brokerage or have crypto as a feature on a larger business model. We apologize, but this video didn't load.
Click here to see other videos from our team. You can try refreshing your browser, or Arbus said that the marketplace has buyers and sellers meeting and agreeing on a trade. A broker would go through a third party when making the transaction. Consumers don't know about pricing or transparency. Arbus said that they have no control over the price that the other side is giving them. We came with a few other big tasks when we decided to go marketplace. These include creating a larger tech company with compliance and technology staffing and infrastructure, as well as filing additional paperwork. Arbus said that he and Bitbuy s president Dean Skurka held several consultations with regulators before March 29 when a joint announcement from the Canadian Securities Administrators CSA and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada IIROC set out guidelines for cripto-asset trading platforms. He said that they have grown from 25 people to 85. He added that it was an extremely busy time for our platform. During that period, the company took regulatory feedback and answered questions on its processes, such as buying and selling, foreign exchange, and onboarding newcryptocurrencies.
He noted that some of the largest players chose to leave Canada after the regulatory framework was rolled out, while Skurka wouldn't speculate on their reasons. Skurka said that the framework is quite innovative and unique, and that it requires a lot more work than what might exist in other jurisdictions. We refer to this as a regulatory moat being put around Canada to protect our citizens from what is happening around the world. Arbus said the goal is to bring more token onto the platform and expand trading volumes now that Bitbuy has cleared the OSC approval process. More big international platforms restrict use of Canadians in wake of the crackdown on criptomes.
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In a world where alternative criptocurrencies pop up seemingly every quarter, adding new coins is something they don't take lightly. You ll never see us listing Squidcoin even if it were to meet our internal regulatory committee process because we could never stand behind something like that, said Skurka, who said it was a token that was subject to a recent rug pull in which its creators absconded with investor money. Skurka said that the company s committee has a set of criteria that assets have to meet, including where else the coin is listed, and those exchanges are assessed for their credit worthiness and regulatory status, as well as the nature of the coin.
With more arrows in the quiver, Arbus hopes that more products and regulations could set the stage for Bitbuy's expansion in the next year. We get approached quite often from larger businesses than us that have ignored Canada, that love what we are doing on the regulatory front, that love the polish that a Canadian regulated entity will bring to the world, Arbus said. We can see that we will have something to say on the global front by the end of 2022. You can learn more about cryptocurrencies and the blockchain industry by joining the Financial Post's free virtual event series FP CryptoDecoded presented by NDAX. FinancialPost.com is a website that has been owned by FinancialPost.com.