Canada’s financial watchdog fined crypto platform Cryptomus $126 million last October after the company allegedly failed to flag suspicious transactions on 1,068 separate occasions in a single month.
A month before that, crypto exchange KuCoin was handed a $14 million penalty for operating in Canada without registering as a foreign money services business.
Those two cases now look like early warnings of what was coming.
Forty-seven of those belonged to crypto-related firms. The latest round, announced Monday, cut 23 registrations in one move.
Finance Minister Signals More Actions On The WayFinance Minister François-Philippe Champagne called the pace of enforcement “significantly increased” and said the government has no plans to slow down.
“Our government will continue to monitor and pursue new measures to address risks posed by virtual currency businesses, such as cryptocurrency MSBs and crypto ATMs, which can be used to facilitate money laundering and fraud,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
The Financial Action Task Force estimates that between 2% and 5% of global GDP moves through illegal channels each year — almost entirely through traditional banking systems.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis puts the share of crypto transactions tied to illicit activity at under 1%.
Those figures don’t mean crypto is clean. But they do raise questions about whether the sector is being held to a stricter standard than older financial industries.
For now, Canada appears committed to its current direction. Officials have specifically called out crypto ATMs as a concern, suggesting future enforcement could extend beyond online platforms to physical kiosks scattered across the country.
Businesses that aren’t in full compliance with registration and reporting rules have reason to take that warning seriously.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
