Stabledash Live · · 23 min

Why Canada Needs a Stablecoin

With Didier Lavallee, CADD, and the Non-USD Thesis

Key takeaways

  • CADD counts Urbana Corporation, ATB Financial, National Bank, Purpose Unlimited, Coinbase Ventures and Horizon Kinetics among its backers.

  • CADD is in a Q1/Q2 2026 launch window with eight design partners, after a first interbank Canadian dollar stablecoin transfer between National Bank of Canada and Wealthsimple in December 2025.

  • Didier Lavallee says Canada makes up about 2% of global GDP but five to 6% of global currency flows, and he expects a Canadian dollar stablecoin to take a similar share of transactions.

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Summary

Tetra Digital Group CEO Didier Lavallee argues that Canada's large share of currency flows creates a market for a regulated Canadian dollar stablecoin, and that people who doubt non-USD stablecoins are wrong.

CADD, a Canadian dollar stablecoin from Tetra Digital Group, is backed by Urbana Corporation, ATB Financial, National Bank, Purpose Unlimited, Coinbase Ventures and Horizon Kinetics. It is issued by CAD Digital Inc., a Tetra subsidiary, and backed by Tetra Trust, Canada's first qualified digital asset custodian. Chief executive Didier Lavallee says that in Canada there are currently no valid options for Canadian stablecoins.

Launch and first transfer

CADD is in an active Q1/Q2 2026 launch window with eight design partners, including Wealthsimple, Shopify, Shakepay, KOHO, Sling Money and Aquanow. In December 2025, National Bank of Canada and Wealthsimple completed the first interbank Canadian dollar stablecoin transfer in proof-of-concept testing.

“I think the main thing I would I would say is that they believe that there's no market. I think that's completely wrong”
Didier Lavallee

Built after Quadriga

Didier Lavallee spent 15 years at RBC, where he was Head of Product, Custody Canada. He says he founded Tetra Digital Group after the QuadrigaCX failure, when the founder of that trading platform "left with about $200,000,000 worth of crypto that was never fully recovered," which pushed the team to look at the lack of a third-party regulated custodian in Canada. He testified before the Canadian Senate Banking Committee in January 2026.

Lavallee says regulated stablecoin players "survive and thrive" and calls the regulated framework fundamental. He also argues that bank-issued stablecoins carry advantages that fintech-issued ones cannot match.

The non-USD thesis

Host Drew Rogers recalled that non-USD stablecoins were maybe half a percent of the stablecoin market in an earlier era. Didier Lavallee says Canada is a G7 currency pair that punches above its weight, with large pension funds, which he calls the Maple Leafs, allocating globally. He calls the belief that there is no market for non-USD stablecoins "completely wrong" and expects CADD to serve as a template for CHF, AUD, GBP and BRL stablecoins.

Lessons from Stripe

At Stripe Sessions 2026, Lavallee says, Stripe showed CallLinks, a wallet technology that lets agents use stablecoins for payments, with live micropayments as small as a third of a microcent running on its Tempo blockchain. He says agentic commerce is still small but "growing really, really fast."

Lavallee's argument is that if stablecoins become the basic layer for how money moves globally, the Canadian dollar has a natural place to take a similar share of transactions. With CADD, Tetra Digital Group is trying to fill a gap that he says no valid Canadian stablecoin fills today.

Stripe, Tempo, FTX, and Tetra Digital Group come up most.

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