Canadian Parliament committee hears from BitAccess and CaVirtex

Bitcoin advocates met with Canada’s Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce yesterday to discuss the future of digital currency in the country. BitAccess co-founder Haseeb Awan, CaVirtex CEO Joseph David and Bitcoin Strategy Group partners Kyle Kemper and Victoria van Eyk met with lawmakers to discuss a wide range of bitcoin-related topics. The Senate Committee is in the early stages of an 18-month long study on the impact of virtual currencies in the nation’s financial system.

The Department of Finance Canada, the Bank of Canada and a professor from the University of Toronto have already given their various takes on bitcoin to the committee, but yesterday’s meeting was the first time members of the bitcoin business community have been invite to speak.

Canada’s government has more direct experience with virtual currencies than most other developed nations. Only last week, the country officially ended its two-year digital currency experiment and would-be bitcoin rival, MintChip. Canada’s largest virtual currency exchange, the Vault of Satoshi, was granted a full Money Service Business License late last month, making it one of the first officially sanctioned bitcoin exchanges in the world.