Trudeau is about to resign as Prime Minister. What impact will this have on the crypto industry?

Source: Coindesk; Compiled by: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is stepping down after nearly a decade in office.

• Trudeau is seen as part of the Canadian federal government's resistance to digital assets, so a friendlier replacement could be good for cryptocurrencies, although the provinces have been in the driver's seat.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation on Monday, which could pave the way for a government in Canada that is less resistant to cryptocurrencies, although provincial governments play a leading role in determining the future of digital assets in Canada.

"I intend to resign as leader and prime minister after the party elects a new leader," Trudeau said at a press conference, citing "internal struggles" that disrupted his governance. “I can’t be the guy who carries the liberal standard into the next election.”

Trudeau said he would resign from his 11-year tenure as Liberal leader, and from the post of prime minister he has held since 2015.

Critics of Trudeau in the crypto community have decried the government’s sanctions on digital wallets during the 2022 Freedom Caravan protests.

The government’s move to freeze cryptocurrency accounts has reverberated beyond Canada and became a rallying cry for Republican lawmakers in the United States during the 2024 election. These politicians have used the situation as a prime example of the dangers of allowing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) because it could create government interference in cryptocurrency trading.

The Canadian election is coming up in October, and according to opinion polls, Conservative Pierre Poilievre has a strong lead. He has also won cross-border support from many supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Poilievre has been an active supporter of digital assets in the past but has been relatively silent on the topic recently.

In Canada, however, securities are a provincial matter, and with no national securities regulator like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (and therefore prime minister) or Poilievre will have limited influence.

Instead, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella regulator made up of provincial regulators, will have more of a say over what happens next with cryptocurrencies.

One of the possible candidates to succeed Trudeau is Mark Carney (who has not yet officially announced his candidacy as the campaign has not yet begun), who comes from the Bank of Canada and was previously the Governor of the Bank of England, and has a lot to say about cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

In a speech at the Bank for International Settlements in 2021, he said: “The core tokens of programmable networks must maintain token value.”

Carney also said that strictly regulated stablecoins are the only way for them to succeed, and if they are strictly regulated, “then what is the difference between them and CBDCs?”