The Bank of Montreal, one of Canada's 'Big Five' banks and the fourth largest in the country, issued new statements on 1st April suggesting that it may be open to working with bitcoin businesses again, provided it receives regulatory clarity from the nation's lawmakers.

The comments were made by CEO Bill Downe as part of an interview at Bank of Montreal's annual general meeting in Toronto this week.

Speaking to his company

, Downe said:

The comments are particularly noteworthy, however, given that Bank of Montreal abruptly cut ties with Vancouver-based bitcoin exchange Cointrader in February.

This decision, according to Cointrader, was part of a larger move by Bank of Montreal to end relations with all of the bitcoin businesses it served. At the time, Bank of Montreal did not comment publicly as to whether it had plans to freeze all of its bitcoin customer accounts.

While the news has been positioned as if Bank of Montreal is looking to perhaps enter the bitcoin market, talks with major Canadian bitcoin businesses reveal it already has a history of working in the sector, one that changed earlier this year amid increasingly harsh government rhetoric.

A spokesperson for Toronto-based bitcoin exchange Vault of Satoshi told CoinDesk that it is no longer working with Bank of Montreal, though it said the bank was "nothing short of fantastic" while they were in business together.

Said the representative:

A representative from Cointrader indicated that the recent statements from the Bank of Montreal CEO were consistent with responses it received from the banking provider:

He added that he believes Bank of Montreal is no longer working with bitcoin businesses, but that at one point, it was the go-to bank for such services.

Notably, the news follows a report last week from The Ottawa Citizen, which stated that the latest version of Canada's 2014 Federal Budget Implementation Act included new directives regarding digital currencies.

The budget act, if passed would require "dealers of virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, to report suspicious transactions, or those over $10,000, to a government watchdog".

Canada has been rumoured to be working on regulating digital currencies, however, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, the official who was perhaps most active publicly on this front, resigned on 18th March.

Despite the tough talk on the regulatory front, Canada's digital currency community has seen some encouraging signs recently that may signal less aggressive regulation will be forthcoming. For example, on 26th March, Vault of Satoshi received its full money services license.

Furthermore, the local industry is showing it has been able to innovate even in the face of challenges.

Vault of Satoshi announced its coin-to-coin trading system on 2nd April, which allows users to trade altcoins directly without first converting to litecoin or bitcoin, while PocketPOS launched a new merchant-friendly point-of-sale tool meant to increase merchant adoption of bitcoin.

Montreal at dusk image via Shutterstock