TORONTO — As the crypto world rides high on the U.S. introduction of Bitcoin and Ether ETFs—a big boost in legitimacy—players in the Canadian sector gathered at the Blockchain Futurist Conference and pondered where to go from here. At the waterfront Rebel entertainment complex, attendees sipped cold-brew coffee at poolside cabanas between onstage discussions of the sector’s increasing convergence with the traditional financial world.

Credit in the straight world: The wild success of U.S. Bitcoin ETFs, which hit US$4.6 billion in volume on their launch day in January, helped lift the crypto market out of a persistent downturn. The endorsement of Wall Street heavyweights like Larry Fink gave digital assets added credibility after a string of high-profile failures and frauds in the sector, including the 2022 collapse of crypto giant FTX. The success of the ETFs is a step toward institutional investors “recognizing crypto as a class,” said Annelise Osborne, chief business officer at the New Jersey-based crypto firm Kadena, during a panel discussion.

Same old problems: Mike Silagadze co-founded and was CEO of Toronto-based edtech Top Hat before decamping to the Cayman Islands to found the DeFi firm Ether.fi. In a presentation on Tuesday, he described the painful process of getting a friend started using DeFi, which involved 15 different transactions and a dizzying array of applications. Crypto “really has to exit this realm where it’s a playground for a couple thousand very wealthy individuals … to something that is actually accessible to normal people,” he said in an interview.

Crypto goes to Ottawa: Alex Mehrdad and Lucas Matheson, the respective heads of Canada for international crypto-trading giants Kraken and Coinbase, both told The Logic they’re making lobbying for digital asset-friendly policymaking a key focus. Mehrdad, whose position was announced Wednesday, said he thinks Canada’s taxation policy for crypto—which requires anyone using bitcoin to, say, buy a burrito to report capital gains on the sale of the digital asset—is a major barrier to adoption. Coinbase promoted its recently launched Stand with Crypto advocacy group to conference-goers. However, Matheson said the organization’s approach will be “very different” from its aggressive U.S. counterpart, which gives letter grades to politicians based on their stances on crypto. “Our members of Parliament need different things than they do in the U.S.,” he said.