The Canadian dollar has been floundering against the USD over the past two months, depreciating 4.2 percent between the start of February and mid-March as a result of lower oil prices, uncertainty surrounding US trade policy and excessive slack in the Canadian economy.
But there is evidence that some Canadians are taking a second look at digital currencies like Bitcoin.
For example, trading activity on LocalBitcoins - a P2P online marketplace for cryptocurrencies - by Canadians has been on the rise since the start of 2017.
The most recent weekly volume data by Coin.dance, which keeps track of LocalBitcoins activity in several countries, shows that $605,785 CAD worth of the digital currency changed hands in Canada during the last week of March:
Last week’s figure exceeded the previous weekly record of $475,930 CAD, which was recorded during the second week of March, 2017, by about $129,855 CAD. This is the largest week-to-week increase on record!
While the amount of actual Bitcoin traded in Canada on LocalBitcoins did not increase to a new record high last week, it did rise to a 53-week high of 431 Bitcoin.
Additionally, Canadians’ rising appetite for digital currencies can also be observed by looking at the rising volumes of one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges: the Vancouver-based QuadrigaCX.
Charts from Bitcoinity show that majority of the highest volume days on QuadrigaCX’s CAD/Bitcoin trading pair were in March of this year. On March 9th, a record $2.7 million Canadian dollars went through QuadrigaCX:
