Crypto Exchange Bitstamp to Withdraw from Canada in Jan. 2024

Bitstamp, the longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it will suspend its service in Canada starting from January 8, 2024.

Bobby Zagotta, CEO of Bitstamp, stated: "This is not a decision we took lightly, and we thank our Canadian customers for their loyalty over the years. We hope to be able to serve Canada again at some point in the future."

Zagotta confirmed that as of January 8, 2024, all Canadian accounts would be closed. However, customers will still be able to withdraw their funds until that date.

Prior to that, Bitstamp had terminated Ethereum staking service and suspended trading of seven tokens​ in the U.S., citing the increasing regulatory uncertainty in the country.

In the past two years, as the global crypto industry experienced a continued downturn and regulations became increasingly stringent (such as the mandatory registration requirements for crypto trading platforms​ issued by the Canadian Securities Commission at the end of this February), a number of leading crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, OKX, Blockchain.com and Paxos, have successively withdrawn from the Canadian market.

Binance said on social media when it exited the market of Canada: "Unfortunately, new guidance related to stablecoins and investor limits provided to crypto exchanges makes the Canada market no longer tenable for Binance at this time. We put off this decision as long as we could to explore other reasonable avenues to protect our Canadian users, but it has become apparent that there are none."

This is also the reason why many crypto service providers have chosen to discontinue their operations in the country.