RE: Michelle Rempel Garner: What do you want from your crypto?.The Honourable Michelle Rempel Garner crafted well thought out, well-written piece. She seems to be a fairly level-headed politician (a rarity in today’s world) with a decent grasp of an emerging industry. Her Calgary constituency has no doubt put bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on her radar (more than other MPs in other provinces I would imagine) and I think she is on the right track..That said, I would argue that bitcoin is already regulated. The main problem is actually an industry problem and not a government problem, other than governments letting it happen. This is by applying legacy finance principles to this new emerging financial market..This “legacy finance principle” is custody of funds. The way we are forced to interact with money today, is within the confines of the custodian. The bank or the government. This is said to be for our “protection”, but it has also pushed the layman to blindly trust all custodians. Your investment advisor, your banker, your fund manager, your broker, all these people had to go through some sort of government or affiliated licensing practice that no one seems to look at or care about. Then when a cRyPtO specialist or platform enters the room, we assume they’re as trustworthy as our existing “trusted” custodians and give them the same free-reign over our funds; a sloppy move based on what Michelle accurately points out is an education problem..Education aside, (and I would point people towards the Bitcoin Academy as a great first step towards education) the key problem is custody. Contrary to what Michelle suggests, Canada has regulated Bitcoin. It’s taxed as a commodity and businesses that sell bitcoin are bound by the same Money Service Business license and registration process as pay-day loan shops, gold brokers and other businesses that deal with “money”. While that might not seem like a big deal, it’s a giant leap from when I started selling bitcoin in 2013. I remember asking FINTRAC what registrations I needed and received a response with something to the effect of “as far as we’re concerned you sell dust, you don’t need to do anything”. Their tune changed (as it should have) when in June 2020 FINTRAC, an arm of the department and finance and Canada's anti-money-laundering regulator, required exchanges and brokers of virtual currency to register as Money Service Businesses Dealing in Virtual Currency. This means that anyone selling any individual or corporation bitcoin is bound by the rules and regulations that FINTRAC has put in place..Further, the securities administrations (CSA, OSC, ASC) are cracking down on custody. This is the right place to be cracking down. The risk/benefit of custody needs to be considered before giving up control of your funds. In my opinion, there are very few circumstances for anyone other than the rightful owner to take custody of that bitcoin. The Quadriga debacle highlighted what is possible of all custodian financial platforms; they can run fractional. This means they can use customer deposits to fund anything they choose. We need to identify and educate the public that ownership of bitcoin is rooted in the custody of bitcoin. We need to erase the fallacy that we need to give our money to someone else to manage. We need to be comfortable taking control of our finances..Michelle is 100% correct, these issues will become ballot questions in future elections, but government regulation won’t resolve scandals and scams, philosophy and education will. Regardless of how regulated an industry is, a scam artists will always be able to tug on a victim’s greed and FOMO to make them part with their money. The root problem is that we blindly trust those scam artists because they appear like the professionals we are forced to use in the legacy finance industry. If we focus on educating users how to custody their money, and understand that holding bitcoin is one of the safest things you could possibly do for the value of your money long-term, it would be very difficult for anyone to make you part with your hard earned (and self-custodied) bitcoin..It is with this educational goal in mind that we launched the Bitcoin Academy. That the "Learn" section is a prominent page on our website. Further, being non-custodial is a core function of our entire product suite. It’s the reason we ask for your bitcoin address first, before we take money. It’s this key function of bitcoinwell.com that makes us fastest and safest way to buy bitcoin. Because you pay and then receive bitcoin, cemented on the blockchain, in the same instant. After seeing disasters caused by nefarious or negligent custodians plague the industry for nearly a decade, we took it upon ourselves to do better. To make a safer way to buy bitcoin. .In Michelle’s article, she closes with a warning. It is a fair warning to be wary of anyone telling you to avoid or buy the dip. I fully agree with this warning, but would like to add a closing warning of my own. It is very risky not to own any bitcoin..Guest Column by Dave Bradley, Chief Revenue Officer of Bitcoin Well.@BitcoinBrains on TwitterDisclosure: Bitcoin Well is an advertiser with the Western Standard
