{"id":517904,"date":"2026-03-06T09:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T09:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/517904\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T09:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T09:57:08","slug":"vancouver-mayor-ken-sims-btc-reserves-proposal-blocked-by-city-provincial-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/517904\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim\u2019s BTC reserves proposal blocked by city, provincial law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/policy\/2024\/12\/12\/vancouver-city-council-passes-pro-bitcoin-motion-citing-fiat-challenges\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">plan to invest city reserves in bitcoin<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/price\/bitcoin\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BTC$70,516.97<\/a> is not permitted under the Vancouver Charter and British Columbia\u2019s Municipal Finance Authority Act, <a href=\"https:\/\/council.vancouver.ca\/20260310\/documents\/r7.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a staff report says<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The briefing released ahead of a March council meeting recommends closing a 2024 motion to make Vancouver a \u201cbitcoin-friendly city,\u201d after staff determined the plan violates municipal investment rules embedded in the city&#8217;s charger. Staff wrote they \u201cconclusively determined that under the Vancouver Charter, bitcoin is not an allowable investment asset for the City.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The conclusion reflects the highly restrictive framework governing how Canadian municipalities can invest public funds. Section 201 of the <a href=\"https:\/\/vancouver.ca\/your-government\/the-vancouver-charter.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Vancouver Charter<\/a> allows the city to invest idle funds only in a narrow set of instruments, such as federal or provincial government securities, government-guaranteed bonds, municipal debt, bank-guaranteed investments, credit union deposits and certain pooled investment vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>British Columbia\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca\/civix\/document\/id\/complete\/statreg\/vanch_00\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Municipal Finance Authority Act<\/a> reinforces the restriction.<\/p>\n<p>Municipal investment pools are limited to conservative assets such as government bonds, municipal securities, bank deposits and highly rated commercial paper.<\/p>\n<p>The law defines eligible securities as bonds, debentures, deposit certificates and promissory notes, reflecting a framework built around fixed income and cash equivalents. Stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies are not included.<\/p>\n<p>A narrower question remains unresolved: whether Vancouver could still pursue the softer branding goal embedded in the motion by accepting bitcoin for taxes or fees, provided the cryptocurrency is immediately converted into Canadian dollars.<\/p>\n<p>While the charter regulates how city funds are invested, it does not necessarily govern how payments are processed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim\u2019s plan to invest city reserves in bitcoin BTC$70,516.97 is not permitted under the Vancouver&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[7888,54945,49,48,55],"class_list":["post-517904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-bitcoin-news","tag-btc","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}