What Does the New PM of Canada Think About Crypto?

On Mar. 9, 2025, it was revealed that Mark Carney will replace Justin Trudeau as the Liberal Party’s leader and Prime Minister of Canada. Is this a victory for the Canadian crypto community?

Who is Mark Carney

For five years, Carney served as a Governor of the Bank of Canada. On top of this, for seven years, he was the Bank of England Governor. Carney was the first non-British person to occupy this position. He has a solid background in the financial and tech sectors. Carney holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford. He spent over a decade working for Goldman Sachs in various offices around the globe.

Carney received nearly 86% of votes in the race for the Liberal Party leadership following Trudeau’s resignation. Trudeau stepped down amidst the economic decline and discontent expressed by various demographics. Carney didn’t participate in Trudeau’s Cabinet; however, he advised Trudeau on the economic rehabilitation that had followed the COVID-19 years.

After the victory in the election, Carney ultimately stated Canada would never be a part of the U.S.A. His program is aimed at solving the economic troubles and cutting government spending and taxes for the middle class. Some believe Carney’s victory can be explained by his economic expertise especially needed given that the economic conditions got worse due to the trade war unleashed by Donald Trump.

Carney’s stance on crypto in the past years

Carney’s victory is hardly good news for the local crypto community. The Prime Minister’s designate has been skeptical towards Bitcoin and has expressed a preference for Central Bank Digital Currencies, thus leaning toward the opposite approach to the one adopted in the U.S. lately.

In a 2018 speech Carney gave while serving as the Bank of England Governor, he said that cryptocurrencies are failing both as currency and as a store of value. He compared the characteristics of crypto as a short-term store of value to the lottery. Also, in the speech, Carney was critical of the low capacity of Bitcoin, explaining that 7 transactions per second are not enough to become a competitive means of payment. He attributed the lack of brick-and-mortar merchants accepting Bitcoin to this.

In 2021, Carney called CBDCs superior to stablecoins, believing that the public will prefer CBDCs over assets launched by private companies. In general, Carney stresses that most cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, but he still believes some of the native tokens and NFTs will persist. Carney says CBDCs will help fight terrorism and economic crime. In contrast to this, Trump banned the development of the U.S. CBDCs for some time.

What does Carney think of crypto now?

We don’t know much about Carney’s current stance on crypto; however, considering the past distaste for cryptocurrencies and the current focus on AI, it seems that Canada is not going to become a strong crypto hub anytime soon. Several media outlets cite Carney’s recent remarks on crypto. Allegedly he called Bitcoin not money but a speculative asset damaging financial stability. However, no link to the source was provided. Carney has served as a board of directors member at Stripe, a platform that supported crypto payments between 2022 and 2024. But Carney shouldn’t see it as a somewhat crypto-friendly move.

While Carney doesn’t support the idea that cryptocurrencies can be somewhat useful for Canada, he is fond of AI. The future Prime Minister believes AI will be able to maximize efficiency, cut costs, reduce waste, and boost productivity. He particularly names education, healthcare, and construction as spheres that should be improved via AI. More than that, Carney suggests that Canada must become the world’s leader in AI and digital technologies. He calls for multi-trillion investments in AI and the building of data centers.

Trudeau vs. Carney

Trudeau has been a vocal critic of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. While the U.S. is fighting to stop the debanking of the crypto companies (Operation Choke Point 2.0), Trudeau, in 2022, unleashed a similar policy against political enemies. That year, Canadian emergency law was used to freeze bank accounts of the “Freedom Convoy” protesters and block crypto donations. In January 2024, the federal judge found unconstitutional the invocation of the Emergency Act to freeze bank accounts and block crypto.

On top of that, Trudeau took to X to denounce the use of crypto in order to fight inflation, calling it “not responsible leadership.” Trudeau’s resignation gave the Canadian crypto community hope for a more crypto-friendly PM. However, Carney is even harsher on digital assets than his predecessor.