Coinsquare exchange adds new board members

Coinsquare, a crypto exchange that has been under the scrutiny of Canadian regulators following allegations of wash trading, said it will be adding two new members to its board of directors.

In a Nov. 25 announcement, the exchange said Nicholas Thadaney and Wendy Rudd are joining its board. Thadaney was President of the Toronto Stock Exchange and Rudd is currently a board member for the Canadian Regulatory Technology Association.

The new appointments follow a major change in leadership mid-year. In July, CEO Cole Diamond and President Virgile Rostand stepped down following an agreement with the Ontario Securities Commission, or OSC, and Chief Compliance Officer Felix Mazer resigned his position. The Canadian regulator banned the three from resuming any management position at Coinsquare for between 1 to 3 years following allegations of the exchange engaging in wash trading.

In their place, the exchange confirmed Stacey Hoisak as Chief Executive Officer, Lawrence Truong as Chief Compliance Officer, and Eric Richmond as Chief Operating Officer in August. The exchange also reported it has applied with the OSC to operate a regulated digital asset marketplace in Canada.

“The measures we have taken are in strict adherence to regulatory requirements and demonstrate Coinsquare’s strengthened commitment to our clients, employees, shareholders, and the digital asset community,” said Hoisak. “Our goal is to create a customer-centric safe place for Canadians to trade digital assets.”

In July, the OSC accused Coinsquare of wash-trading — artificially inflating its trade volume through executing zero-fee market trades into their own orders. This practice creates the appearance of large trading activity without any assets actually changing hands and is an industry-wide problem.

The exchange later admitted to making roughly 840,000 wash trades between July 2018 and December 2019 with an aggregated value of 590,000 Bitcoin (BTC) — roughly $11.1 billion at the time of publication.