Earlier this week, Balance, a Canadian crypto custody specialist, announced it had obtained qualified custodian status in Canada. CEO George Bordianu stated it is time to repatriate the ETF assets stored in the U.S. under sub-custody agreements with firms like Coinbase and Gemini.

Bordianu pointed out that billions of dollars worth of retail assets in Canada’s crypto ETFs are currently held in the United States. He emphasized the need to simplify the custody process and make it more affordable for asset managers to establish additional ETFs and mutual funds in Canada.

“We have billions worth of retail assets in Canada’s crypto ETFs that sit in the United States,” Bordianu said in an interview. “We'd like to bring those assets back home. We're trying to simplify the picture, to make it cheaper and a little bit easier for new asset managers to do a few more ETF and mutual funds in Canada.”

Bordianu mentioned that Balance does not require sub-custody partnerships since it has built its own technology stack to become a qualified custodian, rather than depending on external technologies like Fireblocks or Digital Vault.

The wider issue concerns the development of the crypto sector in Canada. While the crypto assets in Canada’s ETFs may seem modest now, Bordianu believes that with the rise of tokenized real-world assets and stablecoins, Canada must strengthen its infrastructure to manage these assets efficiently.

“It’s like saying the Toronto Stock Exchange should plug into the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation in the U.S. to clear and settle all of their transactions through that foreign infrastructure,” Bordianu stated, comparing the two systems.