Last reviewed 5 September 2026 · Every document below read at its source that week · By the CryptoNorth Team
Canadian crypto platforms file documents with regulators, and those documents are public. They do not always say the same thing as the marketing.
Three things below are matters of record that almost nobody writing about this market has picked up: an advertised fee that the operator’s own filing contradicts, a set of published conditions attached to every Canadian crypto dealer, and an investor-protection scheme that does not cover the thing you came to buy.
Robinhood bought WonderFi, the parent of Bitbuy and Coinsquare, and closed the deal on 1 June 2026. Its announcement told Canadians what the new pricing would be:
“Canadian customers will be invited to download the Robinhood app — unlocking access to lower fees with a flat 0.5% fee per CAD trade…”[1]
Three weeks later, the dealer that actually operates those platforms updated the fee schedule it publishes as a registered investment dealer. That document says something different:
“Each client order includes a fee, levied in the fiat currency of the trading pair, of between 0.5% and 1.85% of the trade value.”[2]
The word “flat” does not appear anywhere in the filed schedule. On a $1,000 CAD order the difference between the two ends of that range is $5.00 and $18.50 — the advertised number is the floor, not the price.
Both are primary sources. Both come from the same corporate group. We are not able to tell you from outside which one you will be charged, and we are not going to average them into a third number that nobody published. If you trade on these platforms, the figure that governs your account is the one in the filed schedule.
The same operator publishes two different figures for its professional trading screen. Bitbuy’s product page lists “Pro trade” at 0.50% maker and taker, noting the rate has been effective since 1 December 2023.[4] The filed fee schedule, updated more recently, lists a product called “Coinsquare Pro” at a Standard Rate of 0.05% maker and taker, and does not mention “Pro trade” at all.[2] They may be two names for one order book or two different products. We could not establish which, so we are reporting both.
Two other things in the same schedule are worth knowing. The spread on the simple trading screen is disclosed as 0.5% to 1.85%, and the document adds that in poor conditions it “may be increased up to an additional 2%” — a stated ceiling of 3.85%.[2] And a promotion running from 1 July to 30 September 2026 gives fully onboarded clients zero commissions, which is a window rather than a price.[2] See what a $1,000 Bitcoin buy actually costs across every platform.
Every comparison article in Canada treats Bitbuy and Coinsquare as competing exchanges. They are two brand names on a single registered investment dealer, and the operator says so on both websites. The identical fee schedule appears on each domain, with only the defined term changed:
“Clients of the investment dealer operated by Coinsquare Capital Markets Ltd. (‘Bitbuy’) pay the following fees…”[2] / “…Coinsquare Capital Markets Ltd. (‘Coinsquare’) pay the following fees…”[3]
Bitbuy’s own footer puts it plainly: “Bitbuy is a trade name of CIRO-regulated Coinsquare Capital Markets Ltd.”[4] This matters for anyone spreading funds across platforms to reduce counterparty risk. Holding coins on Bitbuy and on Coinsquare is not diversification — it is the same dealer, the same custody arrangements and the same failure.
The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization — the body that oversees stockbrokers — publishes a list of the dealers it regulates, and alongside it a list of firms carrying membership terms and conditions. Every Canadian crypto platform that has become a CIRO dealer is on that second list.[5]
This is supervision, not trouble. None of it is a disciplinary finding, and a dealer carrying conditions is not a dealer in difficulty. But it is not the same as unconditional membership either, and the conditions themselves are worth reading, because they tell you what the regulator is actually worried about.
NDAX’s conditions are the clearest example. They are headed “Appendix A — Conditions relating to Staking Services”, and they require the firm to conduct due diligence on validators, to monitor them for downtime, jailing and slashing, and bar it from acting as a validator itself without CIRO’s prior written consent.[6] If you want to know which part of a Canadian crypto platform a regulator watches most closely, it is staking.
The Canadian Investor Protection Fund is the scheme that repays clients when a member investment dealer fails. Several Canadian crypto platforms are members and say so, which is a real mark of standing. It is also the single most misread fact in this market.
CIPF coverage extends to cash balances and securities. It does not extend to crypto assets. Coinsquare states it on its own site: property held in customer accounts “including cash balances but not crypto assets, is protected by CIPF within specified limits”.[3] If the platform fails and your balance is coins, CIPF is not what gets them back.
Membership is still worth knowing, because it tells you which regulatory regime a platform sits inside. We checked each of the platforms we list against CIPF’s own member directory rather than against their marketing.[7]
A cross means the firm was not in the directory when we checked, not that it is unregulated — Kraken, Coinbase, Crypto.com and Netcoins are registered to serve Canadians under a different category. One caution on the ticks: CIPF lists legal entities, and a group can run its crypto business through a different entity from the one that holds the membership. Check which company your own account agreement names before relying on it.
This page is information, not financial, legal or tax advice. Every quotation above is reproduced from the document named beside it and each one is linked. Filings and fee schedules are amended without notice, and the dates given are the dates those documents carried when we read them in the week of 5 September 2026. Check the source before relying on anything here.
Every fee on our comparison comes from the platform’s own published schedule, and where a platform does not publish one, we say so instead of estimating.
What $1,000 of Bitcoin costs →