The world had just begun recognizing crypto as a prominent market. However, Canada took a few steps back by evoking the Emergencies Act and dragging crypto into it.
The Emergencies Act was put in place to deal with national emergencies of urgent and temporary nature that couldn’t be efficiently taken care of under any other law of Canada. Therefore, the Justin Trudeau-led government decided to impose this following the Freedom Convoy protest. While this law requires the involvement of the military, Trudeau wanted to spare them the trouble as he meddled with the finances of the protestors involved.
Amidst these demonstrations and the government’s decision to freeze the bank accounts of the protestors, prominent banks throughout the country went offline. This list included the Royal Bank, BMO Bank of Montreal as well as CIBC Bank.
Canada was certainly outraged and the population was confused about how this took place right after Trudeau’s order.
Furthermore, it was revealed that a few of their ATMs still entailed cash. The chances of the cash in these ATMs running out were high. Consequently, the citizens of Canada expressed fear over their funds locked up in the bank.
Bitcoin untethered by protests in Canada
Cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin have time and again acted as a safe haven during protests and political distress. The Canadian government decided to freeze the accounts of the protestors while looking out for all forms of transactions. This included virtual assets like cryptocurrency. Speaking about the same Trudeau said,
“This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs, and restoring faith in our institutions. We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally.“
Crypto was involved in this mess after the Tallycoin Bitcoin fundraiser raised a whopping 20 Bitcoin worth about $1 million, for the truckers. The fundraising page is defunct now.
Despite this uncertainty in Canada, Bitcoin remained untethered. The cryptocurrency continued going strong at $43,840 while its market cap was aiming for $833.32 billion.