How to buy Cardano in Canada

Cardano (ADA) Tl;dr

Founded: 2015

Founders: C.Hoskinson, J. Wood.

White Paper: Cardano has no formal white paper. However, Cardano emphasizes the use of peer-reviewed research: https://iohk.io/en/research/library/

Foundation: The Cardano Foundation

Partners: IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), Emurgo

Token/cryptocurrency/altcoin symbol: ADA

Coin limit: 45 billion

Consensus mechanism: Ouroboros Proof-of-Stake

Purpose: General purpose blockchain

Other: ADA raised 139.20 BTC through five token sales between November 2015 and February 2017.

Financial products: ADA is 3.6% of Greyscale’s Digital Asset Large Cap fund. There currently are no other additional financial products to get exposure to Cardano.

What is Cardano?

Cardano is a blockchain platform founded by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood in 2015. Hoskinson was one of the co-founders of Ethereum and Wood worked at Ethereum, where he managed operations. A consortium consisting of IOHK (founded by Hoskinson and Wood), Emurgo, a Japanese blockchain VC and the Cardano Foundation is developing Cardano. Cardano emphasizes the use of peer-reviewed academic research in its development process.

This Ethereum challenger is being developed in 5 phases. The phases are named Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire. ADA is the native token on the Cardano blockchain and is used for payment and governance.

The symbol ADA is derived from Ada Lovelace, a mathematician from the 19th century who was Lord Byron’s daughter. Cardano comes from Renaissance mathematician Gerolamo Cardano.

How does Cardano work?

Cardano uses a unique proof-of-stake protocol called Ouroboros. Ouroboros divides transactions into epochs and allocates them randomly to staked mining pools based on time. Individuals add their stake to pools to participate in the process and receive rewards. Cardano claims that the process adds security, scalability and energy efficiency.

ADA Taxes

Cardano is considered a commodity by Canadian regulators. Exchange of ADA for products, services or other cryptocurrencies is considered a barter transaction for tax purposes.

How to buy Cardano in Canada

Cardano is available at select cryptocurrency trading platforms and exchanges in Canada. As of 2021, there are no additional financial products where buyers can get direct exposure to Cardano.