Canada Is Building a Bridge Between Crypto & Traditional Financial Markets

Industry 1 min, 39 sec READ

by Chris Madill

In a huge step toward legitimacy, the Toronto Stock Exchange operator, TMX Group, has announced they will be building the first stock-exchange owned crypto-brokerage.

Canadian crypto-investors will be taking a large step toward legitimacy in the second quarter of 2018. TMX group (TMX), the owner and operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), has announced it will be building the world’s first exchange-owned crypto-brokerage, marking the first cryptocurrency exchange to be operated by an established financial market provider.

Shorcan, a wholly owned subsidiary of TMX, is partnering with premier cryptocurrency data aggregation platform, Paycase, to create the brokerage service. The service will provide Canadian investors with a new level of transparency and legitimacy for their crypto-investments. At the onset, the brokerage will be focusing on Bitcoin and Ether, but plans to expand its index to include other coins as customer demand increases.

Current investors in Canada and the US are faced with a growing range of problems caused by unregulated and non-transparent exchange services. The lack of legal framework and consistent scrutiny by regulatory bodies surrounding online crypto-exchanges leave investors in a compromising position. In the current exchange ecosystem, the potential for money laundering, upcoming government sanctions, exit-strategies and ICO scams all contribute the proliferation of FUD within  crypto-markets. With Shorcan Digital Currency Network’s (DCN) upcoming brokerage on the horizon, investors are finally seeing a legitimate forum in which to trade assets. Chief Executive of Paycase, Joseph Weinberg, defines the impact the brokerage will have on the crypto-sphere:

“Paycase's partnership with the TMX solved a major problem in the Blockchain ecosystem. With this partnership, we have built the first major bridge between the crypto world and the traditional financial markets.”

The TSX is the third largest stock exchange in North America, after the NYSE and NASDAQ. As Shorcan DCN begins trading, many are expecting a sharp increase in interest toward digital assets by other trusted capital market providers, furthering the institutionalization of cryptocurrencies as an asset class.