A senior official at Canada’s Central Bank said the number of residents who own crypto is growing fast and efforts to regulate the industry need to keep pace with the developments.
Related: USA and Canada lead ranking of countries with the number of cryptomats
During an interview with Reuters, the Bank’s Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers said the area is still small, but it's evolving fast. Rogers noted the field is broadly unsupervised, and the institution doesn't want to wait until crypto gets much larger before regulators act.
The problem is becoming more critical as cryptos get integrated into Canada's financial system, which increases the risks such as the recent fall that could lead to hitting the wider financial system.
According to the executive, like any asset that's jumping around in price, people see an opportunity for easy profits. The CB is concerned that people may not be aware of the risks.
The crypto price drop in recent months caused essential losses. Rogers said the sector needs to be regulated, but the question is to decide on how that will be achieved. One of the things is to find out how cryptos fit in the current regulatory regime and if they don't, how to adapt the rules.