On April 18, Vancouver-based WonderFi Technologies Inc. WNDR-NE announced an agreement that it is intending to acquire Toronto-based crypto trading platform Coinberry Ltd. for $38.5-million in shares.

The decentralized finance platform WonderFi said the deal would put around 33% of Canadian enrolled crypto exchanging stages under the care of its with additional arranged acquisitions to come.

“WonderFi’s management team continues to execute on accretive acquisitions and this is an extremely important one because it shows the speed and vision behind WonderFi’s plan,” said Kevin O’Leary, Shark Tank star and WonderFi’s strategic adviser. “Compliant access to crypto is what matters and WonderFi has quickly established itself as a leader in Canada. Next stop, global.”

The agreement comes to a couple of months after WonderFi gobbled up-regulated crypto commercial center Bitbuy for $206 million. Ben Samaroo, CEO & co-founder of WonderFi, told this deal lays out WonderFi as a Canadian consolidator that can handle the world stage.

“It’s really a springboard for us getting into larger jurisdictions as we get taken more seriously from U.S. and other larger markets, whereas I think it’s quite difficult for somebody standalone … to do that,” Samaroo said, adding that WonderFi can likewise draw from Coinberry’s talent pool of 40 staff, including engineers.

Kevin O'Leary said in an interview that there are "several more and even bigger" acquisitions to come. Whenever supported by controllers and investors, the Coinberry arrangement would provide WonderFi with a sum of approximately 160 staff and 750,000 clients.

“We’re definitely setting ourselves up to go toe to toe on the global stage,” the Dragon’s Den star said, adding that the acquisition will put the company in a better position to compete with large foreign exchanges such as Coinbase, Crypto.com, FTX, and Binance. “But remember, we’re doing it on a regulated basis, unlike those other players. We are 100 percent operating under the order and we’re not taking any risks on that.”

Joyashree Dey

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA